Paper, interestingly enough, is a good counterexample to this. Paper takes little more than a way to make fine cellulose strands, and a fine-mesh screen, both o

Paper, interestingly enough, is a good counterexample to this. Paper takes little more than a way to make fine cellulose strands, and a fine-mesh screen, both of which the Romans were more than capable of. The demand was there as well, Romans imported papyrus from their warmer colonies and went through a lot of it. They also used parchment, but it was expensive, a lot of writing ended up being done on reusable wax tablets. Paper was invented when the Western Roman Empire was still extant, and while the Chinese could fairly be said to have had a technological edge over the Romans at the time, it's dubious that said edge played a direct role in the invention. It just, didn't happen. I agree with the general sentiment, and wouldn't call paper "fairly modern" either. But given the topic, it seemed worth a mention.