“So for over 200 thousand years our species was smart enough to invent writing but didn’t until the last 5 thousand years or so?”
Didn’t need it, primitive survival does not require written language. If your father teaches you orally and manually the fine art of cabinet making as an apprentice so that you can survive and carry on the trade does it need to be documented or it never happened? You can’t make cabinets because you have no written certification from an educational institute?
Would you even want the secrets of the trade skills documented so that competition could use them against you and your own survival advantage handed down to you from your father with hands on experience? We even practice this today. Everyday knowledge, experience, and trade secrets are shared without one bit of written language.
Interesting. So our obvious talent at it was not at all a useful thing evolutionarily speaking...and yet it evolved anyway...