Contrary to general perception, the Ancient Indians were very good at keeping records of the happenings around them as is evident from the records of seals and sealings collected from various ancient Archeological important sites.
Again, the Vedic, Puranic, Upanishadic, Great epics, Buddhist and Jain literature and so on belonging to ancient times is there to show to the world that they were second to none in the field of keeping records of the contemporary happenings .
Tragedy is due to certain reasons like the original records prepared/composed by the ancients have either totally lost or have been interpolated by the later day compilers/editors.