This is a bit of a tricky question to convey and I understand the wording is very weird, so I'll try and explain in better here. I am basically wondering what the earliest time period, date or whatever, a piece of history, mythology or religion mentions or lays some claim to.
Now obviously most religions or mythologies have a point of creation or the 'beginning of time'. But what's the farthest back in time that can be discerned as some form of historical period.
For example, I know Indigenous Australian oral history has stories going back as far as 7000 years or so. I guess I am interested how far a real or claimed or imagined historical memory goes.
Sorry if this doesn't make sense but if you have any information that you think is relevant I would really appreciate it, thanks
The oldest that I know of would be the Kalamath Crater Lake Creation Story which if true would be ~7,700 years ago. According to the legend the Sky God and Underworld God Llao battled it out and the result was the eruption and creation of Crater Lake (which is considered sacred). Archaeological objects have been found under the ash layers, which confirm that people lived in the area so the story is feasible.
My specialty is Chinese History. The oldest dynasty is the Xia, supposedly dated at ~1700 BC, but many scholars doubt its existence. The earliest Chinese dynasty with a clear archaeological record is the [Shang dynasty] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty) ~1600 BC with cities which have been found and verified. Hope that helps!
As you note there are some impressive examples of extremely deep historical memory. Australian Aboriginal folklore, for example, may contain memories of antedeluvian landscapes. Another example are the Kaali lakes in Estonia, which were formed by meteorite impacts several thousand years ago, and are said in mythology to have been created by fire falling from the sun. Of course, these may just be coincidences, and there are also cases where oral history is quite distorted for very recent things (for example, in some Dreamtime stories the heroic Ned Kelly is killed by the villainous James Cook). There is a sort of standard rule of thumb that oral history is precise about three generations back, but of course this varies enormously by culture.
In a more general sense, though, after a certain amount of time back oral history becomes essentially achronological. This is quite famously the case with Greek mythology, where despite the best efforts of Hellenistic scholars the timeline between different myths is essentially unreconcilable. Norse mythological stories are also similar to this: they tend to be set, vaguely, in the period from about 400 to 600 (Sigurd, for example, meets Atilla the Hun) but trying to pin a firm date on them is futile. And these are after the attempts by literary authors to jam them into a historical time.
I don't feel comfortable posting this as a primary response, but I don't see a more appropriate place to bring up the Vedas.
How far back do the Vedas talk about? I was under the impression that the Vedas discuss purportedly historical events that come after the creation of existence but more than 10,000 years ago, but I can't remember the timeframe. I'm talking about events preceding the Aryan invasion/migration.