Writing phonetics is what enabled mankind to effectively pass down knowledge. Heck we even know alot about the past because of it, so they (ancient culture) succeeded in passing on knowledge that is thousands of years old. We don't know much about history outside of digging up a few clay pots and looking at structures past the 5000 year mark because they didn't write anything. They might have drawn a picture but without sylable and phonetic language, how could one possibly pass on the name of a bone (person) we may have dug up, and I mean that effectively. All of that history we know only happened in the last 70 lifetimes. It's easy to confuse time. Every example of culture given still falls within the last 5000 years. Beyond that little is known (that is why it's called pre-historic) exept one can date cities and look at buried villages and see that dogs were domesticated etc. Other than that, it's nothing. Even the Celtic and the Norse history came THOUASANDS of years after Egypt. Sure scientists dig up flint and combustables in Scotland and Ireland dating to neolithic times, but what is known about them beyond cave dwellers and settlements is through a Roman perspective and what they taught the people in England. The Celtic tribes didn't even unite until the Romans attacked England (several times they were repelled) in 1st Century BC. A far cry from Egypt. In fact most of what we know about Egypt was already lost at that time, waiting to be redisovered.

Of course mankind passed on knowledge from father to son, to neighbors. We homosapiens really have no inherent survival instinct that tells us how to sow a row of seed or raise cattle, but at a period in time vast knowledge was accelerated beyond imagination and only very recently. By the way, I don't subscribe to the Future Shock theory either. I do see the reasoning though. Nothing wrong with speculating the possibility that culture could burn itself out, so to speak.