It’s a sort of double edges misunderstanding of history. Europeans were not some enlightened bastion of civilization through history and non Europeans were not either. Neither were “mud dwellers” or such insulting concepts representing lack of development or intelligence. At various points in world history there have been highs and lows in sciences and culture and development or standards of living across the globe and within any society in a given period the actual lived experiences of individuals could vary greatly on status or location or other factors.
It’s one of the dangers of looking at history with a perspective of “who’s a winner” or “who is better” etc.
In most or many cases, ideas tend to be recurring, sometimes groups isolated from each other come up with the same ideas around the same time and other times one might come to a sound concept before another.
We also must remember that there are various factors from culture to war, conquest, invasion, resources, and more that can make an idea practical one place but not another at a given time. For example, they may have dreamed up waterslides deep in the driest deserts before anyone else- but having enough water in the deep desert to run a water slide at all let alone do so while supplying sufficient water for the needs of a mass population at the same time wouldn’t really be super practical until around the 20th century- so thinking of the idea and implementing it and thusly developing it aren’t the same; and to the reverse, using the extremes as an example, people living in a desert would be more likely to develop means of agriculture that are efficient in water usage than people living near a large source of fresh water- of course that all depends right? If the desert people in the example can reliably get their nutrition from an easier and more abundant source than farming-
Those people wouldn’t need to farm. And if our lake dwellers saw their population surge rapidly and taxed their water resources, they might actually reach a point where necessity would lead them to developing water efficient farming before the desert dwellers who through social or other reasons didn’t expand their population and demand for resources beyond the comfortable limits of their environment. That speaks to timing as well- one might assume that an older civilization “should be more ‘advanced’ than a younger one,” that if a tribe begins in the desert and a nomadic group splits off and wanders for 1,000 years before settling, the original tribe who had 1,000 years in place should be better adapted and more “advanced.”
This can go either way. Through travels the nomads could have learned skills and been exposed to things and found resources in types and abundance not available to their older former group mates and as such become “more advanced” in certain measures because they
Faced new stresses and had new opportunities. Of course the older group that stayed put could make all sorts of advancements due to stability and being able to iterate on existing infrastructure and culture and due to familiarity. It all depends, and wars and such could either destabilize the older group and put them at a disadvantage for technological or informational advancement or they could also lead to advancements and social changes too right? Revolutions and new technologies and opportunities created by war and the aftermath. It’s full of variables.
It’s one of the dangers of looking at history with a perspective of “who’s a winner” or “who is better” etc.
In most or many cases, ideas tend to be recurring, sometimes groups isolated from each other come up with the same ideas around the same time and other times one might come to a sound concept before another.
This can go either way. Through travels the nomads could have learned skills and been exposed to things and found resources in types and abundance not available to their older former group mates and as such become “more advanced” in certain measures because they