Recorded history only goes back around 5,000 years, but humans have been around for 200,000 years. Could there have been highly sophisticated ancient societies of which no trace remains?
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With the complete lack of evidence, the only way this could be true is if the civilization became so advanced that they could completely erase their existence (perhaps in an ecological effort to return the earth to a pristine state). If they just wiped themselves out with nukes, there would have been no opportunity to erase their archeology, and we would have found evidence by now.
Based on our history, technological advance seems to be an exponential process, so if we survive a few more centuries, this seems plausible for us.
If that were true, it seems very unlikely that they would have left any of their fellow humans behind in a primitive state to evolve into us, but perhaps another species could have reached that state and then covered their tracks if they went elsewhere, or self-terminated their civilization.
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