It requires much more resources to invent a revolutionary battery
Write an app, and you've made a new tool instantly usable by any person on earth.
Come up with a simple device and 3d print it.
Lack skills to do any of that - instantly hire unlimited number of experts. Lack knowledge? Access it instantly.
If we're talking about simple low hanging fruit inventions that can be made by a single person, the search space is much larger than the stuff you can do with your bare hands alone in the forest.
You need to know how to make sharp edges. Which rocks are suitable? How to keep them sharp?
You need to cut down a suitable tree.
You need to know which tree is even suitable.
You have to figure out that either the chunk of wood should rotate, or the sharp edge rotate around it.
You need to know how to make a center pivot, or spindle to turn the wheel. You need to know that you even need this!
After making the wheel, now you need to make axles and some kind of platform to make it useful.
Before doing all this, you first have to realize that you need a wheel!
There is a long list of basic knowledge needed to invent even the simplest things. Every invention builds on previous knowledge.
It's the same now than it was then.
What's changed is that, with the same creative power, as an individual, you could do more then.
You can carve a wheel alone in the wood. It's hard, but as a single individual with only natural resources, you can.
A kid in china, or a grandpa in west africa can do it.
To code a revolutionary AI today, you need a lot of per-requisites: electricity, computer, internet, access to knowledge, education and a looooooot of time to practice.
Even if you are the most creative person in the world, from all centuries included. You can't do it in the wood. You will not see somebody in Mali do it. A kid is unlikely to be able to do it.
Because being capable of creative the concept in your head is not enough. The stuff you could do with what anybody had at hand is gone.
The twisting bit takes some finesse, and obviously you won't be making nylon rope with your bare hands, but making a grass rope is child's play.
Making a wheel, once you have the concept of a wheel, is pretty damn easy too. If you want a stone wheel, take a large stone and chip away until it resembles a wheel. If you want a wooden wheel, take a large piece of wood and whittle away until you have a wheel.
The saying that 'hindsight is 20/20' would seem to be particularly true at the scale of early human invention and civilization.
> take a large piece of wood and whittle away until you have a wheel
This does not resemble the actual construction of any but the smallest wooden wheel for toys.
However, alone, you CAN make rope. It's painful, but you can.
You can't invent the press alone. You need ink, paper, metal, and people being able to put it in shape for you.
Everybody had access to plants to make rope. Not everybody had access to the money, education, market and knowledge necessary to invest the press.
Now today, it's even worst.
