But is it? That's ostensibly the point of this article--trying to actually use data to establish whether or not this "obvious" principle is true [1]. But if you turn to the actual data, the author of the data is creating the historical data using one of three assumptions: either real GDP per-capita is correlated with population growth, which comes both with and without an arbitrary pre-industrial haircut, or real GDP per-capita is literally flat pre-industrial.
It really isn't clear to me if there really is a step change in per-capita GDP growth around the First (and/or Second) Industrial Revolution, or if it's a one-off jump, or if it's a continuous, consistent per-capita growth rate with no real impact. All of those would look pretty similar in a linear-scale graph at first glance. What we do know from other economic proxies from archaeology is that pre-industrial economies weren't exactly static: you can see a clear trend that highlights the rise and fall of Rome (see, e.g., the data in https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-f...), so you better expect that the econometric statistics you use can replicate that trend.
[1] Let's assume the purposes of discussion that GDP here is something meaningful for economic prosperity in pre-industrial times, something that can capture the productivity enhancements that did occur at that time.