What’s changed today? 
Yeh I get you - it was easy to put a mythical explanation behind something and come to conclusions based on observation rather than science.
Reminds me of an episdoe of Star Trek when Data landed on another planet and his memory was lost. The planet was in about the middle ages and the teachings the teacher gave at the school that there 4 elements, solid, liquid, fire, and soft - or something like that.
And conclusion was that fire was an element of wood because it you encourage the fire to come out by heating it.
But back to the point - you still have today educated people who have a leg up on others through education - and you stil have a lot of people who are illiterate.
The Wright Brothers were largely uneducated. And Michael Faraday was a bookbinder and learned to read in his work, largely illiterate until his working days.
Ramanujan is a facinating one, from India - self-taught mathematician - they talk a lot about this guy on Ancient Aliens. Apparently saying he got his knowledge from Aliens.
And your very own Benjamin Franklin dropped out of school at 10 and drafted the Declaration of Independence.
A lot inventions, science, etc. have come from people who were uneducated.
Where it’s fair to say that educated people do have a leg up.
We as a species have genius built-in and some can tap into that and utilise it, whatever happens there in the brain and appetite for success.
Funny thing that brought me back to this thread today. I was reading about an evacuation that happened in the White House in 1952 when a beam of light came down from the sky on the White House.
Now - I heard this on a TV show - so I’ve been trying to find articles on it - but I can only find things like this
Fascinating though.
And to be fair - it would make sense for aliens to go underwater - plenty of water on Earth to sit on the deepest depth of the ocean and be undisturbed.