I think it’s pretty clear that sophisticated societies existed long before recorded history. They may not have had the tools of working with metal, but they definitely had sophisticated philosophical views and moral frameworks. I would bet this goes back even 30-50 thousand years. This idea that humanity sprang up out of nothing in Sumerian/Babylon is very contrived. There was an ice age ten thousand years ago, the c…
Civilization means people living in cities. To do that, agriculture is probably needed. There's also probably some level of specialization and accompanying social stratification. History is written records. There were many prehistoric societies, but because civilization tended to have some form of written records, the prehistoric societies are not considered civilizations. No scholars would clai that humanity sprang…
tl;dr Historically oral history was the only form of discovering what is true and specifically regarded as more rigorous than written accounts.
At least, when taking history into account.
Etymology is also interesting:
> From Middle English historie, from Old French estoire, estorie (“chronicle, history, story”) (French histoire), from Latin historia, from Ancient Greek ἱστορίᾱ (historíā, “learning through research”), from ἱστορέω (historéō, “to research, inquire (and) record”), from ἵστωρ (hístōr, “the knowing, wise one”), from Proto-Indo-European *weyd- (“see, know”). Doublet of story and storey.
Fascinating that history is based on "seeing and knowing."