[tsally]

Unless you are doing cutting edge research, it's impossible to verify an idea you've invented independently is truly original or not. Even then, there's no guarantee (see: Newton and Leibniz).

So I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.

[nandemo]

Oh, I was merely emphasizing ambition's point in a roundabout, non-serious way (I'm not suggesting that people don't give credit to Marco).

I don't agree that it's impossible to know if an idea is original or not. For instance, on one extreme, if 2 composers published a very similar concerto at about the same time, it would be assumed one of them plagiarized the other. On the other extreme, if you're working on an arithmetic problem and there's only one answer, then of course no one would be accused of plagiarism.