>>8674776At this point we just don't know. To a certain extent it depends on how you define cataclysm. The impact event associated with the Burckle crater wasn't a fully global cataclysm as is suggested for the Younger Dryas impact theory, but the megatsunamis it created would have utterly erased coastal dwelling societies around the Indian Ocean with waves on the order of a thousand feet high. Obviously a cataclysmic event for a large area, but not something that would threaten a total reset across the planet (by itself at least, there is some suggestion from a cuneiform tablet that there were multiple impact events ~5000 years ago which together could have had global reach).
For the big cataclysms, it seems that civilization is scoured from the planet by continent scale firestorms, megafloods, and radical climatic disruption such that only a small contingent of prepared individuals survive to carry a fraction of the wisdom tradition into the new societies that emerge from the random survivors who have been reduced to hunter-gatherers. This seems to have happened at least once with the Younger Dryas events (not only does the impact theory have compelling evidence, but others such as Robert Schoch make a compelling case that another type of cataclysm, an extreme solar outburst, happened during this period as well). However, the traditions which speak of the destruction and restarting of civilization tend to state that it has happened several times. This could be based in regional destruction by limited events, it could be pure conjecture baked into the surviving mythology, or it could mean that there have been multiple global civilizations destroyed by cataclysms going back tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.
At the most extreme end, you have individuals like Michael Cremo advocating the idea that human civilization has a history stretching back millions of years.
