I think people are underestimating the level of technological progress that needs to be achieved before it's possible to build a rotating tube out of thin, rigid, light material that will maintain containment of the object being moved and won't break or deform from the strain and the torque of rotation. If you tried making this out of wood, it would break or leak. If you used bronze (like Archimedes did for his screw) it would deform after a short time. Iron or steel before modern metallurgy would have been too heavy. Making and rotating a central screw is significantly easier than the other way around. Mr. Olds came up with this idea just at the right time and place, when the materials and the motive power were both at the right stage of development to be combined in such a device. It is a brilliant invention, but one only made possible by millennia of technological development.