And yet the stylus was useless to the overwhelming majority of humans who ever lived because they were illiterate. And the stone houses required specialized knowledge held by the masons. And you can walk into any major research university and bump into scores of curious and driven people each holding more knowledge than Pliny the elder.

People seem to have this conception that the average premodern person could do anything from growing crops to coming up with Newtonian theories. No. The average premodern person died before the age the average modern person learned algebra.