

It’s very niche, but the only thing I could come up with is Kvevri, a traditional Georgian winemaking vessel. They’re sold today (and still used for their stated purpose, aging wine), I’ve personally seen kvevris with the exact same shape buried in a wine cellar of 12th century monastery, and at least going by the article they’re like 8000 years old, and haven’t changed much in that time.
My other ideas were:
- Bricks (turns out the earliest sun-dried mudbricks, which are very different from modern ones)
- Concrete (turns out it changed a whole lot since the Romans, modern concrete is much easier to pour, sets faster and is much stronger)
- Nuts & bolts (initially were hand-crafted and non-interchangeable - yuck!)
- Knives (I’ll let knife enthusiasts speak about that one)
I would argue that Wi-Fi is also fundamentally the same as it was invented, it’s just network packets sent over high-frequency radio waves, but there has been a lot of changes in specifics. It’s the same for wheels, while the fundamental principle is the same, the differences between a wheel 4000 years ago and today are staggering.