I'm going to take a contrarian view on this.

About 1/15 humans who have ever existed are still alive. And that includes the period before writing.

I think it's not unreasonable to think that most books have been written in the past 125 years.

I do not see any reason to deify the past. I say this as someone who has read the Bible in the original Hebrew and the Talmud in original Aramaic. They're of interest as a window to a different time, but fundamentally they're probably no smarter than many people today, and they have less mental tools and worse nutrition (which is linked to intelligence).