The article reminds me of how incredibly different the modern world has become and whilst we may consider ourselves to be at the most 'advanced' stage in human history, I think these ancient cultures could teach us a lot. We have an abundance of knowledge about the external world, yet very little knowledge on the internal.
While I can't speak for the person you're responding to, my recent interesting Zen Buddhism has left me quite impressed with the things they figured out centuries ago that only really entered our social world relatively recently via the field of psychology.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), for example, as one of the few proven effective approaches in therapy, is in many ways not so different from (zen) Buddhist practices. And the growing body of research on meditation and mindfulness is at least indicating that these things are very good for an individual's well-being.
While I personally do not care much for the more spiritual and religious sides of all this, I've definitely become less dismissive of these things.
Those things were known before psychology named, published, and formalized them. They were just called "common sense" and presented alongside a number of competing ideas. Buddhism is no different in this regard: everything it gets right is not known to be right until someone uses a reliable process to verify it. Until then, there is little reason to accept it as a known truth.
What 'annoy' me the most is that modern humanity may know a lot, but individuals don't know much. It's not because it's been discovered, collected, printed and industrialized that one know.
