[alatar]

To get myself back on thread, I think that the Valar did not experiment as we may think of it. There weren't 27 trees, all essays in the craft of making the Two, where all 25 (27-Two) were just complete failures. In science/experimentation, there are usually more failures and dead ends than successes. Think of Osse experimenting with ships. How many elves did he drown until he got it right? Did some of Varda's stars crash into Arda as she just didn't use enough glue to keep them hanging in the sky?

On the other hand, not much is known about the world before the elves showed up, so maybe many of the flubs were hidden back in the depths of time.

And regarding Egyptian contact lenses - anything's possible, but why then do we not have other examples of their knowledge of optics? And sometimes we see the past through our present-day filters, seeing bits of small glass and seeing 'contact lenses,' whereas the Egyptians meant something completely different.