While one is always wise to heed the words of /u/Searocksandtrees, in 1972 Alexander Marshack presented a theory in his "The Roots of Civilization" that would make the Upper Paleolithic (what was formally called Cro-Magnon) method of keeping time some of the first record keeping (and therefore the dawn of history, at least of a sort).

Marshack examined - often with a detailed microscope, Upper Paleolithic art, particularly what is call mobilary art (carved bones, rocks, and antlers that could be carried). He found what he felt was a pattern of a repeated scratches together with counter scratches where lines appeared to be "x"ed out. His analysis maintained that the lines consistently appeared in groups of 7 and 28/29.

Marshack believed he could identify different tools that had created the first set of scratches and then the second, which he took to mean that someone had mapped out a time table with one tool, and then that person - or another - had kept time by using the calendar to X out the days.

Marshack used hundreds of examples from many sites of this sort of presumed calendar keeping. See this image, for example; and notice the lines on the horn - which could easily be taken to be a symbol from nature to refer to the moon.

Marshack's work was not received universally in a positive manner, but I found it intriguing if not persuasive.

In general, it is fairly universal that pre-industrial, non urban people look to the moon as an essential means of time keeping. For people not in the tropics, seasons provide the big picture and a means to keep track of the passage of years. It would be shocking to imagine the Upper Paleolithic hunters of northern Eurasia would have done anything differently.

hi, questions on deep prehistory (and especially species other than homo sapiens sapiens) are better suited to our sister sub /r/AskAnthropology