[RightWhale]

If the records consisted mainly of scratches on sheets of treebark, a general flood probably wouldn't do much to preserve the record.

[discostu]

Right, unless a society is into carving stone like Egypt or Maya their record can evaporate very quickly. Also remember most historical records are an accident, most people don't really spend much time making sure their society and time are properly recorded in history, they just do their thing and if their diary or shipping orders gets found 500 years later well there they are. We've kind of gotten into time capsules in recent decades, but I wonder just how useful those really will turn out to be. I remember in the late 70s the TV Guide was really popular to put in time capsules, but the real world was never like 3's Company or Charlie's Angels, now Married with Children that could give future historians a pretty solid depiction of American life but that came later.