[RightWhale]

human history is pretty damn short

Yes, it is. One might wonder why that is so, if there might be an external reason or if people essentially the same as us for 100,000 years didn't happen to think of keeping a diary until 6000 years ago.

Why is human history so short?

Did something happen back then?

[discostu]

I think we were too busy. From what we do know of life before recorded history it really sucked and was oriented towards subsistence survival. Not much to record: "bad hunt today, children starve. Good hunt today, less children starve". It wasn't until we started pushing the technological envelope and actually managed to invent liesure time that people started writing stuff down. Of course the birth of beauracracy also has a lot to do with it, that's why we know so much about Rome and so little about colinear societies, Rome wrote down everything.