Has it ever, sort of jumped out at 'ya, that if "mankind" really has been tens of thousands of years, if not much longer, not too far from being in his near-to-present-day, genetic "form", why is that we don't see much of the remains of civilizations, going back more than something less than six thousand years?
Old campfires, maybe, possibly dated to be being older than six thousand, and some cave paintings, called older...but nothing much significant, like buildings or cities, and certainly not "writings" exhibiting developed language usage.
Now don't get me wrong here...I'm certainly not saying that the earth, or "man" [be it some form or hominid?] has only existed for 6 thou...
but something changed, about that far back, and the animal we know of as being "man', began to behave quite differently than before. Or so the archaeological evidence suggests, anyway...
Menes of Egypt who united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms, and the ‘Ice-man’ found in the alps are almost contemporaries. The Egyptians wouldn’t have copper tools until after the Hyksos invaders, but the ‘Ice-man’ had them. I dont think the ‘flame of civilization’ idea of it spreading out from Babylon and Egypt holds much water. People were people and did different things, built boats, used neat tools, domesticated species, but until Agriculture, there couldn’t be Civilization in the form that leaves evidence of a civilization. The ‘Ice-man’ wasn’t waiting to get out of the ‘stone-age’ by the influence from Egypt.
Sedentism and agricultural surpluses?