Is it fair to say that even tens of thousands of years before Rome and the Han Dynasty, there were still large empires and kingdoms albeit humans didn't write stuff down?

by apocalypse_later_

Or was the world just unintelligible barbarians and post-cavemen?

 

I'm fascinated with pre-history, specifically the time before the formation of Rome and the Han Dynasty. These two were the biggest "organized civilizations" at around 0 B.C., but obviously there had to be a "before" that built up to it all.

What I'm curious about though, is just how far back that kind of organization existed. From what I've read, humans as we know it came about around 75,000 B.C. That is 77,000 years of human consciousness. Also, language has ALWAYS been a thing, just that there wasn't a visible form established yet. So is it fair to assume that for tens of thousand of years prior to "history", people were still living in structured, large-scale states?

Gankom

There's always more that can be said on such a topic, but you might enjoy reading this recent post from /u/orangewombat on What civilisation existed before Sumer? I know a little bit about Jericho & Cathalhoyuk, but I’m not too sure about anything else & can’t find too much around the internet There's a good discussion of the "first" civilization.