Why didn't gravity seem to be understood before if there were scales?

[Wigberto Marciaga]

Scales depend on mass, just like gravity. The greater the mass, the more the scale moves, deforming its initial position; The lower the mass, the less it moves and the less it deforms with respect to its initial position. Just like gravity, the greater the mass, the more space will curve, and the smaller the mass, the less it will curve.

I think this would be an example of the little interest that humans of the past had in observing natural phenomena.

Maybe someone is wondering, did an apple have to fall on Newton's head for someone to occur to him that something causes bodies to be attracted to the ground, or downward.

Yes, the scale states that that something is its own mass. Newton also thought of something like this:

Quote

Every particle in the Universe attracts every other particle with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses

Evidence has been found from the scale that indicates that these instruments were around 4,600 years ago. But it seems that it took more than 4,400 years for a better understanding of how gravity works.

There are indications that the ancient Greeks, at least some of their philosophers, had proposed the biological theory of evolution (a theory that scientists continue to support today). But no one seems to have thought of this explanation for why objects fall to the earth's surface (like apples). Yes, they thought about it, but their ideas and explanations, as usual, were wrong.

[exchemist]

2 hours ago, Wigberto Marciaga said:

Scales depend on mass, just like gravity. The greater the mass, the more the scale moves, deforming its initial position; The lower the mass, the less it moves and the less it deforms with respect to its initial position. Just like gravity, the greater the mass, the more space will curve, and the smaller the mass, the less it will curve.

I think this would be an example of the little interest that humans of the past had in observing natural phenomena.

Maybe someone is wondering, did an apple have to fall on Newton's head for someone to occur to him that something causes bodies to be attracted to the ground, or downward.

Yes, the scale states that that something is its own mass. Newton also thought of something like this:

Evidence has been found from the scale that indicates that these instruments were around 4,600 years ago. But it seems that it took more than 4,400 years for a better understanding of how gravity works.

There are indications that the ancient Greeks, at least some of their philosophers, had proposed the biological theory of evolution (a theory that scientists continue to support today). But no one seems to have thought of this explanation for why objects fall to the earth's surface (like apples). Yes, they thought about it, but their ideas and explanations, as usual, were wrong.

It was not obvious to ancient people that the ground we stand on is the surface of just another object with mass, like an apple except bigger. You need that insight before you can construct a theory like Newton’s. Astronomy, in particular the predictable motion of the planets and the heliocentric perspective to account for it, would have been a necessary precursor to thinking in such a way. 
 

There is a long line of development in thought about the world, which has progressively seen it, and us, less and less as unique and more and more as just one case of a general principle. This can be seen in the move from geocentrism to heliocentrism and then to seeing our solar system as one of many and our galaxy as one of many. Or in seeing Man as unique and later as just one animal among many produced by evolution.

Hardest of all, historically speaking, was probably the start of chemistry. The modern idea of elements required considerable leaps of imagination, considering that substances around us tend to be complex mixtures of compounds with no obvious connection or pattern among them. At least with astronomy you have a “clean” system, simple enough for accurate calculations and predictions, which strongly suggests some unifying principles and order must be at work. 

[Sensei]

The most basic equation of gravity does not require any significant knowledge, except the ability to think, measure and calculate. i.e., drop an object from a height d and measure the time it spent flying toward the ground. You get a few samples and derive the equation d=1/2 a t^2.

The problem with people is that 1) there was no free public education for all people until the end of the 19th century 2) only a fraction of rich aristocrats (later also rich townsfolks) (a few who could read, write and count) were interested in science. Because of this, for centuries and millennia, there was slow development because they were more interested in their daily lives, and increase of their personal assets, not in the development of science.

Nowadays, too, only a small fraction of the population is engaged in science. But because the population is huge, there is the largest absolute number of scientists in the world.

[swansont]

We have a lot of technology that we use where we don’t understand why it works - we just know that it does. I’m pretty sure they had e.g. siphons back in the day, before anyone understood air pressure. We don’t notice the ~1 atm of pressure on us, after all.

People had barometers and noticed the correlation with the weather without understanding the details. They had evaporative cooling structures in ancient times without knowing exactly how they worked. They just knew that wind passing by something wet cooled the air.