E.g. a lot of country sayings might offer an interesting starting point to figure out if there's some truth to them and some interesting things to discover there but by no means they are proof of anything.
is it once a scientific paper about it gets published on a peer reviewed reputable journal?
is that the only way? or do alternatives exist?
Are there legitimate alternatives to the scientific method?
If there were no journals, I don’t think they would have to be created before anything counted as being done using the scientific method.
Though, I do agree that peer review is very useful.