I am not familiar with Lucio Russo's work. However, while the ancient greeks had many practical innovations, and in many ways had an incredibly deep understanding of the universe, their approach to science and technology in general was in no way comparable to what was going on in Europe in the early modern era. What I mean by this is that while the many ancient Greek engineers, mathematicians, astronomers, and other intellectuals were certainly brilliant people in their own right they lacked both the cultural backing of the scientific revolution in addition to many practical mechanical means of investigating their beliefs.

Let me break this down. There have always been intelligent people inventing clever things and observing and figuring out how things work in every society. But the intellectual development of the scientific method is different. Firstly, besides presupposing a few things like "the entire universe CAN be understood" and "the entire universe SHOULD be understood" that were not necessarily present in all societies, the scientific method also represents the collaboration of many scientists from many different regions using printed records and a formal university system.

Were there Greeks who thought up something like the theory of evolution? Sure, possibly. Further muddying the waters is the fact that many of our modern scientific terms descend from Greek terms with which they have no actual relation. For example, I've heard friends be amazed to hear that Aristotle was writing about atoms, but in reality his theories were nothing like modern atomic theory. He had no microscope or other lab equipment to investigate his theories. And even if he had, he would have had no standardized method of recording his data, procedures, materials -- it's like that Carl Sagan quote about making apple pies from scratch, to make the scientific method all you have to do is develop rationalist and positivist philosophy and proper experimental practices (control groups, double-blind studies, etc). You can't have science without a sound understanding of proper statistics, and how would we have statistics without first having the accounting developments of renaissance-era Venetian bankers?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that for each thread of an idea, you can always find some traces of predecessors in the historical record. In the past people were individually just as intelligent as they are now. The ancient greeks certainly had a technical and theoretical understanding of the universe that was not quite matched until the renaissance or early modern period. But what did this mean for them? How could they take advantage of these inventions in practical terms? Of course, they did in some ways, such as the weapons of Archimedes, but in general, what would it have meant for the Greeks to understand the law of gravity? They couldn't build rockets or even flying machines. Obviously they understood that things fell and there was a reason for it. Does that mean they were approaching understanding modern physics? Not necessarily. What would have meant for the Greeks to understand the theory of evolution? They already knew how to breed domesticated animals for their needs, and understood how heritage worked. It is possible some of them thought on a larger time scale. But, despite their deep thought, I do not think their practical or theoretical achievements can be compared to what was happening in the early modern period. They lacked the consistency to be replicated on a mass scale, and indeed the history of science is inextricably linked with the history of industrialism. Wow, I'm really rambling now.