[RightWhale]

There are indications that towns and maybe small cities existed at the end of the last Ice Age. These were all located in coastal areas that suddenly got flooded out at various times roughtly 10,000 years ago. Who is to say how long these villages and town existed before they were washed away? Maybe a long time. That is where records would have been kept; a lone tribe in the forest wouldn't do well in the permanent record-keeping department.

[discostu]

But of course paper doesn't last. Some guy on the History Channel once made a comment about Babylon being a society of paper and Egypt being a society of stone. If places got flooded away whatever records there were are probably gone, you see that even now; small towns die and nobody cares anymore and the place is functionally erased from history.