A lot of that is just propaganda. The last 1000 years of western intellectual tradition has be marked by the present zeitgeist propagandizing against the previous zeitgeist.

The western dark ages weren't all that dark, nobody thought the world was flat, Giordano Bruno was an occultist and not champion of natural science, nailing your theses to a church door wasn't a mic drop thing but more like making a forum post, there's even nuance to the Spanish inquisition.

And it gets even spicier the more recently you look!

I have a feeling that since the industrial days we're also very removed from physical reality and only skilled at handling forms and vague concepts. People back in the day had first-hand knowledge of lots of thing in the world.