The History Channel ran a show about chinese shipbuilding technology of the past. They understood how to make large (300 foot) oceangoing vessels that were strong enough to take the stresses of open ocean waves. They simply built double hulls and filled them with a form of concrete to stiffen them.
It’s easy for us to say someone else was stupid for not coming up with something we’ve lived our entire lives with (like wheels) But if we had never encountered that technology we might be a thousand years away from it now.
I would never suggest it was stupidity. It's more likely that no one saw the need for a them. Just a few decades ago, almost nobody thought people needed a home computer — let alone one that fits in a shirt pocket.