I read yesterday that the late British astronomer Patrick Moore shook hands with all of Orville Wright, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. It is remarkable how quickly we went from rudimentary powered flight to the moon.
In science and technology things develop in many areas concurrently and at some point stars suddenly align and boom things happen extremely quickly.
It's a bit like small drones these days. They require small powerful motors, high energy density batteries, and integrated semiconductors. All those technologies developed independently and then as soon as they all became available, boom, drones everywhere.
I never got these kinds of statements. What on earth are you comparing us to? Somehow people who make the above statement never remark how slow it was moving from the development of agriculture to being sedentary, for instance.