jjw wrote:

"However, it is my long standing opinion that current society, all segments of it, tend to underestimate yesterdays society. If we know anything at all we owe to our predessors."

Totally agree. What's more we very definitely under-rate the contribution of our Muslim friends during the Middle Ages. The West hasn't actually invented everything in spite of what many people seem to believe. And many Muslims were alchemists at the time. We even owe a lot to the person who fitted a sharpened stone to a stick during the Gravettian.