betiko wrote:The US has no ancient history so preserving yogurt to get some sort of culture doesn't count, tzor
I wasn't thinking of the United States.
The Iroquois Confederacy was believed to be formed in 1142 but that's not really "preserved" records.
On the other hand, perhaps I'm dissing oral history because of the problem of "telephone tag."
The Mayan Classic period (c. 250–900 AD) is far more detailed with written material.
Switch over to the British Isles in the end of that period and we still have no idea if the mythical stories of "Arthur" was real or not. We have actual names of real rulers of the Mayan Empire and not a single provable piece of documentation from England over who was ruling the lands.
Let's go to our antagonist's native land ... (or so it is commonly assumed)
The earliest known written records of the history of China date from as early as 1250 BC, from the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BC)
Yea, show me 13th century BC written records in Europe. I dare you. It's centuries before ROME, and eariler than Neolithic Greece.
It's older than Egypt, but Egypt isn't in Europe so that doesn't count But Egypt is still older in the historical records than Europe.