If they were that smart 100,000 years ago, it seems to me like they would have dominated the earth long before the last 6 thousand years and there would be massive evidence of them.
I think the time frame has to be wrong. Extrapolate backwards the population growth of man and it doesn't support a 100,000 year time frame. And certainly not a 100,000 year time frame where man was highly intelligent the whole time.
Yeah, I can believe folks from 100,000 years back used handles ~ maybe even 250,000 years back ~ or 1.2 million years back ~ and homemade spear points.
There is no particularly logical reason to posit a constant or even continuous growth rate for the human population.
Even in historical times we know of periods during which the population in various areas stagnated or even declined sharply.
In the course of about a century the human population off the world dropped by about 10% due to Mongol massacres.
China has a repeated cycle over the last 3000 years of one dynasty falling apart,partially due to population reaching its limits with available resources. The resultant chaos often lasted for decades or even a century or two. When the next dynasty finally got control, the population was often 25% to 50% of what it had been under the previous dynasty. Population starts to built in the peace created by the new dynasty... Rinse and repeat.
Population under the Roman Empire was a large multiple of that supported during the Dark Ages.
The human population of the Americas dropped by something liked 85% to 95% during the 1500s as a result of the introduction of Afro-Eurasian diseases.
Steel was first made in Africa over 100,000 years ago. It was repeated in Damascus before the birth of Jesus Christ. Yet, in neither case did wide-scale manufacturing result. That occurred in Europe in the last few decades of the 18th century in Germany, spreading to England then to the U.S.A.
Whether a discovery or invention becomes popularly known and replicated is separate from its initial occurrence.
The Roman Republic had all the theories in place to launch the Industrial Revolution, but it never happened. China invented gunpowder and eyeglasses, but gun manufacturing and optometry never became industries in that nation.
The book, Guns, Germs and Steel, explains why.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)