That's a good point about what is a form of survivorship bias in science and journalism, but there are not just cases of "we hadn't seen this technology until l

That's a good point about what is a form of survivorship bias in science and journalism, but there are not just cases of "we hadn't seen this technology until later" but also cases of "we had seen a lack of this technology later". I'll admit my thinking on this is very seat of the pants. I'm sure historians, archeologists, etc. think about this plenty.