Truthfully, my view is that there have always been those who choose evil and those who do not. What names and groupings they’ve had over countless millenia have differed or changed, and my view is that there is not “one” group throughout time. All I care about is that those who choose evil get pulverized.
I also do not ascribe to the belief that human civilization is only a few thousand years old, if that helps any. :-D
OUR civilization is about 12,000 years old post diluvial (Younger/Dryas). There are mountains of evidence there was civilization before the Younger/Dryas Event all supported by the Torah. Gobeckli Tepe and The Sphinx are solid (literally) hard evidence.
There was "advanced" civilization probably 3 or 4 times before The Flood. Who knows how many times before that. They all grew and were mostly destroyed, but managed to carry on. Their "advanced" civilizations were likely a lot different than ours. There is evidence of homo sapiens sapiens using tools 100,000 years ago.
The real lesson here is this: it's all happened before, and it will all happen again. Our timeline is but a speck on the wheel of time.