Did any civilizations one could call "ancient" or "classical" (Egyptians/Romans/Mayans etc) have their own classical civilizations that they saw as "before their time" or a source of their own, contemporary culture? If so, how did they know about these civilizations - did they preserve the literature, art, and/or buildings or ruins?
One of the best and most well-known examples of this is Classical Egypt and their understanding of the Pyramids, which were well over a thousand years old by that point. As such, I will refer you to older AskHistorians posts that address that specific piece of the answer.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/19hrhe/how_did_the_romans_view_ancient_egypt/
I expect that Chinese history from the same time period would offer additional good examples, but that is not something I'm very familiar with. Fingers crossed that someone with that expertise follows up with this post, because I'm interested in that as well.
One of my older answers deals with this topic. Another user already (and very kindly) mentioned it, but I'll paste it up anyway, to allow anyone interested to ask follow-up questions:
The Greeks and Romans were aware that other civilizations were older than theirs. Egypt was a special source of fascination, as witnessed by evidence ranging from Herodotus' long description of Egyptian history and customs to Roman graffiti in the Valley of the Kings. Yet in the case of Egypt (and, as we shall see, more generally), they had a poor understanding of chronology. They tended to think that the Pyramids, for example, were about 1500 years younger than they actually were.
When it came to ruins not associated with any living culture (which are, I think, more the focus of your question), it tended to be assumed that almost everything could be fit into a traditional mythological/historical schema that began around 1600 BCE (by our reckoning) and identified the Bronze Age with the age of heroes. When describing the ruins of the Mycenaean citadel at Tiryns, for example, Pausanias (who wrote in the second century CE) observes:
"The wall, which is the only part of the ruins still remaining, is a work of the Cyclopes made of unwrought stones, each stone being so big that a pair of mules could not move the smallest from its place to the slightest degree." (2.25.8)
Another Mycenaean wall, on the Athenian Acropolis, was associated with nebulous prehistoric Pelasgians (e.g. Hdt. 6.137). Chance discoveries of ancient burials, likewise, tended to be linked with the heroes of history/legend. The bones of a tall man found with bronze weapons on the island of Skyros, for example, were proclaimed to be the remains of Theseus. Later, an ancient burial exposed at Rome was decided to be the body of the legendary king Numa.
The Greeks and Romans, in other words, tended to assume that they knew what civilization/era ruins belonged to, even if they actually had no idea. Plutarch, for example, recounts what happened when the Spartan king Agesilaus decided to open a tomb traditionally thought to belong to Alcmene, the mother of Hercules:
"In the tomb itself no remains were found, but only a stone, together with a bronze bracelet of no great size and two pottery urns containing earth which had by then, through the passage of time, become a petrified and solid mass. Before the tomb, however, lay a bronze tablet with a long inscription of such amazing antiquity that nothing could be made of it, although it came out clear when the bronze was washed; but the characters had a peculiar and foreign conformation, greatly resembling that of Egyptian writing..." (Mor. 577F-78A)
Assuming that Plutarch's source is reputable, Alcmene's tomb probably belonged to a Mycenaean worthy, and the writing on the mysterious table was Linear A or Linear B. Agesilaus & friends, however, didn't know that - and so, since the writing looked more or less Egyptian, a Spartan was sent to Egypt with the tablet. There, a learned priest (who of course knew no more about Linear B than the Greeks) pretended to translate it.
When in came to ruins in the classical world, in short, ignorance was no barrier to confident interpretation.
[I'm on the road at the moment, but I'll address any follow-up questions later today.]
I hope this reply isn't too late for you u/urag_the_librarian. This is a fun question because, as is sensible enough...of course ancient peoples knew about even more ancient peoples. But how can we understand their level of knowledge? That is a much more difficult question. We are left with history (literacy and orality) and artifacts. And while this sub is dedicated to the literature side, I think it's equally as important to see the commonality of heirloom objects in the archeological record.
So as you're thinking, the Romans understood their "cultural origins" to be in the Aegean; whether they had come from the Trojans, or simply had adopted Greek “high culture.” Some other peoples around the world have also done this, this conceptualization of history is in its essence a form of "translatio imperii." Literally, “the translation of empires,” the ideological tool that later peoples used to cement their political position through their supposed ancestry with an earlier golden age. The Aztecs believed their cultural origins were in the Toltec empire of a few hundred years prior, and controlled the narrative around the sacred usage of the even earlier site of Teotihuacan. See u/400-Rabbits answer here for more details.
And similarly, the Qin of ca. 100 BCE China believed their cultural origins to be in the earlier Shang and Xia dynasties. Sima Qian, the historian of this time, says the earliest Xia histories were about 2000 years prior to him and he is right; as these two "dynasties" roughly correspond to the Shang and Erlitou periods of the bronze age of the north Chinese plain, ca. 1000-2000 years before his writing. These periods were not necessarily “dynasties” but simply correspond to the “over-kingship” of a particular powerful city’s lineage in northern China central plain, first at the Erlitou site then Erligang, then at the Shang “capitals” Luoyang and eventually Anyang. The details Sima Qian gives about the rulers and chronology for both periods are probably entirely mythological, having been invented in the succeeding Zhou dynasty of the early iron age when this new state needed its own translatio imperii (i.e. the Mandate of Heaven).
...Allan (1991) further suggests that the Shang may have had an ordinary myth of the Xia as a previous people who were their inverse, but not as a dynasty. This myth, according to Allan, was later transformed by the Zhou into the story of an historical dynasty which was conquered by the Shang. This new interpretation was made in the beginning of the Western Zhou dynasty [ca. 1000 BCE], in order to justify their conquest of Shang under the mandate of Heaven (Allan 1991: 57-73). These arguments are plausible given that no contemporary writing of the Xia has been found. At present, there is no way to prove the existence of the Xia as a dynasty, although there may have been a Xia people in oral tradition among the Shang and other contemporary peoples in the later second millennium BC.
But most peoples credit their ancient history to have been the establishment of their lineage/people by a great ancestor after the creation of the world...as you mention, the Maya, their stories are like this; or at least the Popul Vuh of the Quiche.
I think we should give ancient peoples the benefit of the doubt. They were intelligent, and they knew (in some way) how to interpret ancient artifacts they found. I am in love with "The Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant,” this bronze age Babylonian text has a master suggesting things, and then his supplicant servant supporting his decision even when he’s flip-flopping. It’s actually wonderful philosophy, but I’ll quote a segment which not only speaks to how they remembered their own history, but also how they remembered their deep unknown history. Translation by Robert Pfeiffer.
Master: I will do something helpful for my country.
Servant: Do it, my lord, do it. The man who does something helpful for his country, his helpful deed is placed in the bowl of Marduk. [The tablets listing men’s deeds were stored in Marduk’s bowl]
Master: No servant, I will not do something helpful for my country.
Servant: Don’t do it my lord, don’t do it. Climb the mounds of ancient ruins and walk about, look at the skulls of late and early [men]; who [among them] is an evildoer, who is a public benefactor?
I find this a particularly beautiful statement of ancient wisdom, an honest reckoning with the realization that whether one is good or bad for one’s community is utterly obliterated by time. A process which, by their time, had already created “ancient ruins of early men.” We find a similar realization about death in Gilgamesh, when an enraged Inanna threatens to raise the dead (6.2), translation by David Ferry.
Give me the Bull of Heaven or I will go
to the Underworld and break its doors and let
the hungry dead come out to eat the living.
How many are the dead compared to the living!
Brief references to situations like this give us a glance into how a bronze age person was conceiving their own past, even how they conceived of a deep and unknown past. Yet generally, as with the Mayans, Babylonians conceived of their history as a chain of events by culturally similar mythical kings who lived in the deep past soon after creation. And when Babylonians conducted archeological digs, and found ancient texts written in an archaic yet similar language; the evidence they had uncovered only confirmed this hypothesis. This is detailed in a wonderful paper by Irene J. Winter, Babylonian Archaeologists of their Mesopotamian Past.
In it, she gives an example of an iron age Neo-Babylonian period excavation at a bronze age Old Babylonian period temple. At this dig, the excavators found a fragmentary Old Babylonian tablet which had been placed there as a foundation deposit by a king some 1000-1500 years earlier. The tablet was restored, even going so far as to attempt to (incorrectly) write in Old Babylonian so as to restore the broken text. The foundation deposit was replaced, and the uncovered foundations were re-used for a new temple. In the eyes of the king who “restored” such ancient temples, he had simply replaced many planks in Theseus’ ship. Textual reconstructions of ancient languages were probably overseen by people such as Nabu-zer-lishir, who was in effect the “field director” of excavations under King Nabonidus. Historians today give him the title “scribe,” but specifically he was appointed to this position by the king because he was an expert in ancient languages. While their tradition of archeology and philology did not survive, and was re-invented by Europeans thousands of years later; it is heartwarming to know that we have a record of ancient people who were, as we are in this online forum, obsessed with understanding history.
This desire to physically recover the past, and using history to advise one’s choices during excavation is actually seen thousands of years earlier, by people at Catalhoyuk. As noted by Ian Hodder here.
...in Building 1 retrieval pit F.17 was dug [in ancient times] to remove or retrieve a relief sculpture (only traces of which remained on the wall)...Given the large amount of erosion off the top of the mound that occurred in the millennia after the Neolithic occupation, we cannot know how deep these Neolithic 'archaeologists' had to dig, but it was at least 0.7m and probably substantially more. We do know that Building 1 had been filled and that any digging down implies a precise historical memory even if embedded within wider knowledge about where important sculptures were generally placed. Not all houses have major relief sculptures on the west walls of main rooms [where the retrieved sculpture was].
A previous post about Xenophon and the assyrian cities in Anabasis by /u/Iphikrates
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/5g326k/comment/dap70ii