That's the way it was in all Christendom for 1500 years. Wherever you went in Christian lands, from Ethiopia to Gibraltar, Chaldean Iraq and the Assyrian Church of the East, the Copts, in the Holy Land, Jordan, Lebanon, Anatolia, the Christian settlements along the Silk Road to the western border of China, Gaul, the lands of the Arian Visigoths, and Celts and Britons, --- Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Chalcedonian, non-Chalcedonian, Roman, Frankish, whether in union with the See of Peter, or in some sort of aautocephalous diocese or eparchy ---you'll not find a Christian place or a Christian era when you didn't have deacons, priests, bishops: apostolic succession.
That is, for 1500 years.
For the last 500 years, for some groups, not so much.
“That’s the way it was in all Christendom for 1500 years. “
I don’t know of a single priest before 100ad. So you better cut that back to, “after the church felt free to add on to God’s revelation, there were priests, until Christians began again to follow God’s revelation as the standard.”