To be fair iteration on this sort of craft probably happened a lot faster back then than today. When you are done gathering food and firewood for the day, all you have left to do is to tinker with this sort of stuff by the fire before you go to sleep for the night. Too many distractions today for many people to tinker on projects and invent new stuff, and thanks to mass media people tend to focus on distant things they might have no influence over vs the things in front of them.