Once upon a time, there was no time as we conceive it. There was no “stone age” during the stone age. There was only stone.
For most of history, there has been no such thing as history, not on any scale knowable to the living then. The remembered past was not meaningfully different from the present, and one naturally supposed the future would be similar. On any scale that mattered to the living, they were right. Things repeated themselves unto annihilation.
We say history repeats itself, but it is in fact the study of only two specific categories of events: those which had never happened before, and those which will never happen again. And so became the time before history, history. Let’s hope it stays that way.