Been thinking about this for a while and honestly it bugs me that every time Egypt comes up it's straight to the Mesopotamia connection or the "mystery builders" angle. What about Nubia, Kush, the civilisations further south and west that we barely hear about in mainstream archaeology? The trade routes alone suggest serious contact. There's decent evidence of cultural exchange with Nubian kingdoms that gets glossed over in favour of the more dramatic "outside influence" theories.
I do lean toward the ancient aliens side of things personally but even I think we're doing a disservice by jumping straight past the very real African connections first. Would make the anomalies stand out more clearly if we actually mapped what was local contact first.
Anyone here dug into the Kerma culture at all? That one keeps nagging at me. Curious what others reckon.