But after that we got to pretend everything was invented in Western Europe.

you jest but it is wild how often people declare “if it was ‘advanced’ and outside of Europe, it was probably aliens. not the people, it was aliens, obviously.”

Most of the time when I see this snark, and look it up, it turns out that the "original" inventor did only the most basic step or vague foundations and never refined it further or explored any potential applications.

Most often it happens with China since they spend a lot of propganda to present themselves as the true inventor of everything.

The joke was that we can't know after burning the library.

People can't even agree what goes on today. To what degree history is fiction I have no idea but it's probably worse.