Comment by matthewbauer

Human intelligence has remained approximately the same for 50,000 years. The ancient world had its geniuses at the same rate as the modern world. The main difference is whether their environments enabled them to prosper. Europe really had some issues in the post Rome era that meant that most of that talent was not appreciated and lots of knowledge was lost. It sounds like this stuff came from even earlier and had been passed down without knowledge of how they were produced.