>>64138158
Pre Imperial Rome people seem to care about precision, but the interest was lost and the skills to make things like pic rel too until the 1000-1200.
The "old period" from 2000 BC to 200BC - 200AD in the Mediterranean seems to had been 'decent' at retaining knowledge but that was lost after the 3rd century, there's no kind of 'inevitable progress' accumulated for centuries.
Curiously the isolation of Europe due to bad relations with the Byzantine Empire and Arabs caused a new incentive for "ersatz tech" that the early Middle Age didn't had.