Just reading today about the discovery of the Causeway of the Great Pyramids and the question came to mind... Did people not recognize the significance of historical context in the past? Of course things like war, conquering plunderers, thieves, etc, would get in the way of preservation of significant artifacts, maps, etc, over time, but did people recognize that hundreds (even thousands) of years later these discoveries or mysteries would be pondered my their fellow man?
In above example, would there be someone who said, "these Pyramids are a pretty big deal... We should keep decent records of everything about them for future generations"?
You might be interested in this thread from a month ago. In short, this is not something people do, especially in a generally illiterate society. To reuse the examples from me and /u/farquier: imagine writing a book that told you all about what reddit and Facebook and Instagram are, or one that explains how to make a BLT. These things are obvious to us. Or, more relevantly to the pyramids, pick your favorite Washington, D.C. site. It's no secret that the Lincoln Memorial is a tribute to Abraham Lincoln. There's a giant statue of him, quotes relevant to him inscribed on the walls, its name on maps and postcards and tour books, and, in case that weren't enough, there's countless pennies with Lincoln's face on one side and his memorial on the other. Could we make it any more clear what it's for?
Additionally, it's not like we're entirely clueless about the pyramids. We do have plenty of papyri that record the business side of Egyptian mortuary temples: who brought what supplies, from where, for what, and how many. That's not to forget all the images from tomb and temples walls and documents that depict these ceremonies. But these things are terribly fragile, and we have no reason to expect them to have lasted 4000 years. From what we have though, it's clear that many, many more records were kept. Also, that past thread has good examples of folks carving things in stone for future people.
Lastly, it's always good to bring up this quote from the Greek historian Thucydides:
Suppose the city of Sparta to be deserted, and nothing left but the temples and the ground-plan, distant ages would be very unwilling to believe that the power of the Lacedaemonians [Spartans] was at all equal to their fame. And yet they own two-fifths of the Peloponnesus, and are acknowledged leaders of the whole, as well as of numerous allies in the rest of Hellas. But their city is not built continuously, and has no splendid temples or other edifices; it rather resembles a group of villages like the ancient towns of Hellas, and would therefore make a poor show. Whereas, if the same fate befell the Athenians, the ruins of Athens would strike the eye, and we should infer their power to have been twice as great as it really is.
This is as good of an example as you get of a fellow considering what future folks may think of his own time.