A lot of what we use isn't all that new. Swaty barber hones were around in the early 1900s. I'm sure coticules and Arkansas stones have been around a while as well. A lot of the old sales ads have hones of various materials and size options, many aren't unfamiliar to us today. They may not have had pastes, and I'm sure skill with the utensils on hand varied from person to person, but I bet some folks way back when made wicked edges.
I'm sure to folks back then it was 'simply shaving' because they had more good shaves (even by our hobbyist standards) in their second year shaving alone than I had in my first 10. In another 5 years when I've settled on a preferred finishing system and there's not much new for me to experiment and play with, it'll probably be 'just shaving' to me too.