When you compare the educational prerequisites needed to discover something new nowadays and the educational prerequisites needed in Ancient Athens, you have your answer.
Most reasonably bright high-school kids can understand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, etc. A few can even rederive their findings; there were a couple times when I was growing up when I had this great insight, only to find out that it had been discovered by a dead Greek guy 2000 years ago. But unfortunately, discovering the same stuff that the ancient Greeks discovered doesn't count as noteworthy anymore. The bar's been raised a little higher.
Same goes for most fields. Lots of college CS students can implement a Lisp interpreter now; it was a big deal when McCarthy did it in 1960. When Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto, he gave it to the best concert violinist of his day, who took one look at it and replied "This is unplayable." Now it's standard repertoire for dedicated high-schoolers.
Most reasonably bright high-school kids can understand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, etc. A few can even rederive their findings; there were a couple times when I was growing up when I had this great insight, only to find out that it had been discovered by a dead Greek guy 2000 years ago. But unfortunately, discovering the same stuff that the ancient Greeks discovered doesn't count as noteworthy anymore. The bar's been raised a little higher.
Same goes for most fields. Lots of college CS students can implement a Lisp interpreter now; it was a big deal when McCarthy did it in 1960. When Tchaikovsky wrote his violin concerto, he gave it to the best concert violinist of his day, who took one look at it and replied "This is unplayable." Now it's standard repertoire for dedicated high-schoolers.