I was struck, on reading your post, the similarities between your premise and the premise of "Intelligent Design" advocates. To paraphrase both you and they, "How can something so perfect have occurred iteratively?"
I admit there is some similarity there, and it might be because I didn't fully explain myself, but I would argue that it's neither a perfect conception nor iterative development that creates true greatness, but repetitive rebirth. When you simply build on the past, you aren't considering its true intentions. How many laws are there in the US that are simply reactions to British rule (i.e. safety from the quartering of troops)? Should those laws be held in as high esteem as those laws that are truly based on human rights? Descartes continues in Discourse on Method:
As for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than
resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either other
more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of reason. I firmly believed
that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old
foundations, and leaned upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.
Not judging, just noting the similarity.