You clearly forgot to add the usual "IMHO" wrt your "garbage" comment.
Your "typically American" jibe is both gratuitous and fatuous -- more becoming of an uneducated, English old fart, than a young person claiming to have a solid grounding in science. Where do you think many of the recent Nobel Prize winners and top universities are located these days? *****lia?
Diego has eloquently detailed some of the points I was going to address, and I agree fully with what he has said.
You are also casually forgetting the many "ancient technological" feats (multiple, similar pyramids worldwide , impossibly close-fitting stones, and much, much more) that we could barely match today even with current technology. The excellent AA series had many examples of such ancient, even prehistoric, allegedly 'human' achievements.
I watched every season of the AA series (including contributions from several top-notch scientists I have personally known and respected for decades). I found the content to be generally of extremely high calibre (with just a few exceptions), and very well-produced and directed. Most of the contributors are well-respected in their respective fields, not just hack pseudo-scientists.
Your estimate of the real-content ratio of AA is ridiculous. I pre-record everything I watch, and FF through all the ads, etc. Often I will go for a break (short or long), and the after-break recap is often very much needed and appreciated.
Finally, I can absolutely assure you, based on decades of personal experiences, that a great (global) government-inspired cover-up of new scientific discoveries has been going on since at least the days of Tesla, arguably the greatest scientist since Newton. What the bastards also more recently did to Eric Laithwaite was disgusting. The ideas of both of these exceptional minds, and others, are now being pursued in quarters waaay beyond the sight of any government, and will be vindicated in the near future.
It's going to be a very interesting next few years. I hope I live long enough to see the way it all unravels.