There are some Scandinavian royal lists (not really genealogies) that run back to King Frosty ~ but there are, alas, several King Frostys.
Spanish Jewish genealogies, kept safely in Russia I understand, a full copy actually at University of Moscow, run back into the early Middle Ages. There's a university affiliated facility in Cincinnati that has a full copy of that material ~
The big problem is in America. This was an incredibly huge and empty place back in the day, and almost everyone was illiterate. Records weren't kept.
Very true if you are talking about the post-1670 wave who were sent here as undesirable elements. Some of them, of course, were fortunate and ambitious enough to acquire skills, including skills at keeping records.
Many of this subset came as indentured servants and learned quickly to keep daily logs of work to prove when their term of servitude was up.
The early Puritans, however, were a highly educated lot relative to their day and quite meticulous in keeping records. So were the early residents of the Jamestown Colony, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent. Even during the "starving time" which nearly wiped out the colony by 1610, there are meticulous records as to how dwindling supplies were divided.
I don't think what you see in America is all that different from Europe. Depending on the region as well as the station of the people, record keeping ranges from the highly meticulous (England, Germany) to the nearly non-existent (southeastern Europe), with all shades in between.
Even with English ancestry, most records will tend to disappear around the 16th century unless ones ancestors were fortunate enough to have served in the clergy or civil service or link into royalty, even as bastard children. Many of these will likewise disappear about the time of the bubonic plague when mere survival took precedent over record keeping.