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its always seemed strange to me that we just assume something didn't exist before a certain time just because that was the earliest artifact we've found so far.

so much of ancient history which is assumed to be truth is really just based on assumptions and suppositions

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In my experience historians don't assume that, but when journalists write up a discovery that pushes the earliest-known date back they like to write it up as if they had.

Especially Greek and Roman history. Some of what is “known” is based on as little as a word or two carved into some stone monument… other things are based on thousands upon thousands of written works that survived antiquity (in some cases we know more about Rome 2000 years ago than we do anywhere else until the renaissance)

There is this transition between scant evidence and near modern levels of familiarity in a rather short time.

And if you compare histories, it gets even more absurd. We almost know what Cicero did hour-to-hour on some important days. We don't even know which century Kalidasa, the most important Sanskrit poet, was active in.

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