The jhānas were not invented; they were discovered. People in India had been practicing mindfulness of breathing for many centuries by the time of the Buddha. They had been stumbling into deep, stable states of concentration for a very long time. Eventually these states were codified and arranged in order of increasing subtlety of object. By the fifth century b.c.e., these were well known and were being taught—Master Gotama learned them from his two teachers before he became the Buddha.
