You’d be better off asking this in r/anthropology. Your question predates written language and existent oral histories. To attempt to answer your question in a superficial manner though, long distance trade doesn’t necessarily mean people taking goods long distances. It can also mean bands of nomads trading with neighboring band of nomads such that goods travel long distances through successive trades. Ex: A tribe gathers obsidian from their sacred mountain. No other obsidian is available for a thousand miles in any direction. They trade some to a neighboring band on the steppe for leather. That band trades it to another more distant band in a neighboring forest area for wood products. The forest band trades it yet further away to a coastal band for conch horns. Millenia later an academic finds obsidian tools hundreds of miles from the source and concluded there was long distance trade.