What are some examples of things people 2000 years ago understood almost as well as us?
Look at Buddhism or stoicism as examples. The deeply nuanced and detailed understanding of human behaviour in some writing is almost dumbfounding at times. You can learn so much from it. Sure, there are weird parts too. But kids these days like skibidi toilet, and I know people who like tv shows about guessing if something is made out of cake or not. We’re as weird as ever.
The influence of the moon and the sun on weather and tides.
Where baby animals come from.
How to make beer and bread.
The ancients noticed patterns, but had almost no causative understanding of what was happening.
> The influence of the moon and the sun on weather and tides.
Even Newton didn't correctly understand how tides actually work (there is no oceanic "tidal bulge"). It took until Laplace for dynamic theory to be developed. The ancients were unable to predict tides except by repeated observation of a specific location.
> Where baby animals come from.
There was zero understanding of biological reproduction before the modern era. Claiming that people 2000 years ago understood this phenomenon "almost as well as we do" is absurd. They didn't even know about sperm cells, nevermind chromosomes or DNA.
> How to make beer and bread.
Alchemy, with no insight into what was really going on.
The ancients understood none of the things you mention even remotely as well as we do today. In fact, I'd argue that they essentially didn't understand them at all.
Very few people trying for a baby think about DNA. They think about the fertility of the woman in terms of her menstrual cycle. Thats practical science which has been unchanged for a very long time.
You're not wrong. I am literally wrong of course. Figuratively I think I'm less wrong than you say.
Knowing when the beer is ready is a damn sight less than the chemistry done by even a good number of amateur home brewers these days. Knowing the sheep are pregnant is a far cry from the directed breeding done even at small farms today, to say nothing of the genetic programs at larger ones.
If you think their work was trivial, you might not understand how competent and insightful they were, or how little so many aspects of this knowledge and these theories have changed in thousands of years.