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they put us to shame continually what with what they were able to do without the technology and heavy equipment we depend on so highly.

There was a sci-fi writer a while back, wish I could remember his name, might have been Asimov, who wrote an entire story based on this. The idea was that with too much stuff available, people had a harder time finding good solutions because they were trying to incorporate all the things they had into their solutions rather than limiting it to only what was necessary.

The first example was an experiment where people were stuck on one side of a room with an electrified floor and had two planks, a length of rope, and some other stuff to construct something to allow them to get across within a time limit. Everybody spent so much time trying to make shoes or something out of both boards that they failed the time limit, except the one guy who ignored the second board, attached the rope to the one board and bunny-hopped his way across. It was a better solution hidden by the overabundance of other resources.

Anyway, just a random recollection spurred by your comment.

Anyway, just a random recollection spurred by your comment.

This in turn reminds me of a science fiction story I read in one of the monthly digests about a ship from an interstellar empire that had dominated much of the galaxy and had set it's eyes on earth. They viewed it as a totally backwards and ignorant planet that one ship could easily subdue because they hadn't even mastered the simple technology of interstaller drive.

When they landed and emerged carrying their swords and flintlock pistols there were met with tanks and rifles and the captain realized that these natives had spent all their efforts on war and energy and communicatiosn but totally missed the one obvious thing that most civilizations discover early. Once they took the ship apart they'd instantly understand and then would become an unstoppable conquering force, he thought as he was led away in chains.

There are so many brilliant ideas that never made it because the person behind it lacked a way to get it out there, or it wasn't commercially viable in that specific time, or other reasons or simply ended in some catastrophe (think major volcanic eruption or ruinous war) and are now forgotten. From contemporary reports Archimedes alone had several things that to this day we cannot figure out how it would have worked.