The History of Human Civilization

Our idea of when civilization started around 6000 years ago and we were all Stone Age before has been in place for probably a century or more now. There's lots of angles and vectors that come at this problem. And one of the particular elements of that that I'm fascinated with is the technological evidence that suggests that there was something else going on a long time ago. This idea that these civilizations didn't just emerge out of the Stone Age from nowhere and immediately peak, doesn't make any sense to me.