That is baseless comment. Their achievements are low hanging fruits but only by today's standards. You can say the same thing practically for anybody. Einstein discovered relativity because low hanging fruit. von Neumann did all the amazing works because low hanging fruits.
And how can you say they would not reach the same level as Tao? You are indicating that being truly genius is some modern phenomenon. May be 100 years down the line, even Tao will proabably be downplayed and kids will be learning advance calculas before they turn 10.
It's mostly a question of population sizes. The world population in their age was around 15% of what it is now, and only a fraction of those people would have had access to enough of an education to be noticed as a top mathematician. So it would be astonishing if their top mathematicians beat our own.
And how can you say they would not reach the same level as Tao? You are indicating that being truly genius is some modern phenomenon. May be 100 years down the line, even Tao will proabably be downplayed and kids will be learning advance calculas before they turn 10.
Come on!