I will try to steelman watwut, a lot of people presume compound exponential economic growth is basically inevitable as a law, so you can always go back to some point in time.

However, economic growth was basically flat before the Black Plague, and increases were basically random events that went back to Malthusian dynamics.

Only since the Black Plague has the world enjoyed exponential economic growth.

Most people talk about the industrial revolution, a lot of other comments talk about the british agricultural revolution before that, but economic historians have identified the inflection point at the black plague - that's where compound interest really started to be a driver of growth, it barely existed before that, at least on long time scales.