You're making the assumption here that "our society," however you choose to define that, is somehow separate from that of the past. We could not have "superseded them so greatly" if they weren't there to lay the foundation. Euclid's compiled theorems in his Elements all seem fairly obvious. But if no one's ever put them together coherently before and created the field of geometry, it's pretty impressive. It's really hard to make advancements in a field with no basic principles. Euclid, if born in the 20th century, could have been another Bill Gates or Buckminster Fuller, it's all based on what's already available to you. The more there is to build off of, the more you can do at a faster pace.