Everyone understands a queen is worth more than a pawn. Even if you don't know the exact value of one piece relative to another, the rough estimate "a queen is worth five to ten pawns" is a lot better than not assigning value at all. I highly doubt even 20 year old chess engines or beginner projects value a queen and pawn the same.
After that, just adding up the material on both sides, without taking into account the position of the pieces at all, is a heuristic that will correctly predict the winning player on the vast majority of all possible board positions.
