“6000 years ago, 4000 years before Christ. That IS old, even before the Egyptians.”
And 500 years before the Sumerian civilization.
What we know of those two civilizations is just what archeologists tell us. Even to them there are various things which are mysterious - they have no idea what they are or were used for; and so generally dismiss them as ‘religious’ objects, jewelry, or decorations.
However, the biggest problem with archeologists is they have no (or very limited) scientific training. They know the dates of a civilization (learned from other archeologists), how to preserve items, how to uncover items, and so forth. But after that their discipline gets weak. They are not cross trained, but rigidly compartmentalized.
Ask them to compute angles, do simple surveying, measure shadows, do a chemical analysis, and so on, they will just scratch their heads and argue dates etc.
A crystal stone becomes jewelry, even though it is optically ground to a diopter - it magnifies and corrects for shortsightedness or far sightedness.
The white limestone casing on the Great Pyramid is just decoration, even though it is also ground and polished to optical standards, further the stones were fitted to a hair width apart. Never do they take into account the time it would take to grind and polish those stones when figuring how long it would take to build the pyramid, or why the Old Kingdom Egyptians went to the trouble.
In short, both the Old Kingdom Egyptians and the Sumerians began their civilizations with technologies fully found. Where did those technologies come from? Archeologists can make guesses, but they do not know.
Which leads to you question: “So what we humans doing from 200,000 BC - 4000 B.C.?”
Since our current civilization is just over 6,000 years old, a span of 200,000 years leaves room for many civilizations to come and go. Where are they? Well, suppose they built like the African civilizations in the 14th Century: out of wood, and were far in advance of the Portuguese - at the time, the most advanced in Europe. Once the Portuguese introduced firearms those civilizations collapsed and the jungle took over; the wood rotted and disappeared.
Suppose some one else built out of glass, copper, or even iron. All those materials would be either shattered or corroded to dust over the span of several hundred thousand years (even out own were ours to collapse totally as others did in the past). Then there is the problem of ‘prevailing consensus’ which plagues all the sciences, especially archeology - which basically says everything is linear, and if something can’t be, then it wasn’t.
Back to the crystal stone: since optical devises where not used until the 17th Century, then they must be jewelry and are relegated to some dark corner display case in some obscure museum - same for other ‘anomalous’ objects: they do not fit the consensus - and so are ignored.
An archeologist could trip over a 100,000 year old civilization today and not see it, since it could not have existed and move on to more productive sites. That’s what humans were doing for the past unaccounted hundreds of thousand of years.
What er are doing today is more important then what we may or may not have done in the past: we are ignoring the obvious to satisfy someone’s professional ego.
BTW: there are stories (true or not) of metal figurines being found in lumps of coal - back in the day when people had to smash the lumps fit them into their stoves - those would be figurines would be hundreds on MILLIONS of years old. Go figure.
PIF:
"However, the biggest problem with archeologists is they have no (or very limited) scientific training...
their discipline gets weak.
They are not cross trained, but rigidly compartmentalized." A wiki definition of archaeology includes the following:
"The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past.
In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research.
It draws upon anthropology, history, art history, classics, ethnology, geography,[6] geology,[7][8][9] linguistics, semiology, physics, information sciences, chemistry, statistics, paleoecology, paleontology, paleozoology, paleoethnobotany, and paleobotany."
Under the related discipline of paleontology, it says:
"In addition paleontology often uses techniques derived from other sciences, including biology, osteology, ecology, chemistry, physics and mathematics.[2]
For example geochemical signatures from rocks may help to discover when life first arose on Earth,[9] and analyses of carbon isotope ratios may help to identify climate changes and even to explain major transitions such as the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[10]
A relatively recent discipline, molecular phylogenetics, often helps by using comparisons of different modern organisms' DNA and RNA to re-construct evolutionary 'family trees'... "
These suggests that at least the best of archaeologists are a very scientifically-minded and trained group, indeed.
PIF: "...a span of 200,000 years leaves room for many civilizations to come and go.
Where are they?
Well, suppose they built like the African civilizations in the 14th Century: out of wood..."
A civilization built only out of wood would not, by definition, be as advanced as one which used metal or even sophisticated stone & ivory objects, i.e., this one from circa 25,000 years ago:
PIF: "Suppose some one else built out of glass, copper, or even iron.
All those materials would be either shattered or corroded to dust over the span of several hundred thousand years..."
Glass, copper and iron do not totally disappear, especially as often happens when they are buried under layers of mud & dirt.
If/when such remains are found they will certainly change our perceptions of pre-history.
If/when.
PIF: "An archeologist could trip over a 100,000 year old civilization today and not see it, since it could not have existed and move on to more productive sites."
Any significant remains of ancient civilization would certainly be of interest to archaeologists, long before they figured out, more-or-less, how ancient they were.
Scientists would first look to see just what other known civilizations were similar, and then if radiometric or stratigraphic dating came back with totally unexpected results, there would be a long debate, and numerous retestings, until they could comprehend what they found.
So far, no such "civilizations" from say, 100,000 years ago have been found.
Frankly, I don't comprehend what it is that makes some people so very desperate to disbelieve the findings of ordinary scientists, that you will invent cockamamie scenarios out of thin air.