I agree with both sentiments but the closer I get to primary-resource history / prehistory the more I appreciate the horrifying astronomical randomness of what is preserved / what we stumble across / what we use to cobble together our lumpy inconsistent historical narrative.

There is so much cosmic space that exists between any two historical artifacts. There's definitely room for a multitude of completely unpreserved civilizations.

On-the-nose reading that comes to mind, Of Ants and Dinosaurs by Liu Cixin... very anomalous book / quick entertaining read...