[ I guess you mean "high technology" ancient civilisations? ] The problem is that wrong/inadequate/inferior theories will tend to be neglected, professionals w

[ I guess you mean "high technology" ancient civilisations? ] The problem is that wrong/inadequate/inferior theories will tend to be neglected, professionals will be stay clear of them, and "if only we had better theorists" could be a rallying call in those cases as well. "If only there wasn't such a bias against phlogistonism we'd have higher-quality phlogiston research." Weirdly enough I don't think I've heard this argument much in the crackpot science world, where I have more experience, but it is not uncommon for people to imprint on obsolete theories that modern working scientists can't really discuss because they don't know them in detail or maybe even in broad strokes (epicycles or the like). I'm happy to leave it to the professionals. History is a quite high-evidence high-rigour domain, with many converging sources that confirm earlier theories (genetics/linguistics/carbon dating/etc.).