>Lone investigators created theories, built instruments, conducted experiments, and wrote accounts of different aspects of nature. There could then be decades o

>Lone investigators created theories, built instruments, conducted experiments, and wrote accounts of different aspects of nature. There could then be decades or even centuries before the next major recorded advance. Lots of times they were doing things that no one else they came in contact with can begin to even understand very well. Natural scientists have often each made constant progress around the world as long as Homo Sapiens has been around. It's just that the records of what and when they did it are so few and far between, and most of them have been lost or never even recodred to begin with. It simply took decades or even centuries before some of this ultra-rare stuff turns up, often unexpectedly. If only one percent of research today turns out to be outstanding, you would have to expect that over the whole of human history, and especially prehistory, orders of magnitude more of the outstanding stuff was lost than the paltry developments one single generation can come up with.