Um... The historical record points out multiple societies that predate ten thousand years ago. But you don't get from "socially adept monkey that can sweat" to "architecture" quickly. Civilization needs a lot of items and processes to be invented first - and they pretty much all come from a survival need. Specifically, from a response to a survival need that outgrows that need.

For example - cultivation. Humans were cultivating plants around them well before agriculture spread out from just being a thing that happens at loamy river deltas. The advanced math and reasoning skills needed to turn hides into functional garments could be turned to grander things like (eventually) urban planning, when all that energy wasn't being spent on just Not Being Naked. The power of flame to transform objects was first harnessed to transform edible resources into food, drastically increasing the caloric and nutritional value (which took our already overpowered Stamina stat and just made it game-breaking). It was only after that this same process would be turned to hides, and eventually those weird rocks you sometimes find, giving us metal.

First we made innovations that met our needs. Then, generations would be spent honing those innovations and most importantly, passing them down and securing them as Knowledge. Don't overlook the power of the Oral Tradition. It takes a long time for this process to happen, because pre-civilization, we are still just animals. The best animal, completely broken and overpowered, but we're still playing the game right alongside the big boys. Innovations take longer when all that innovative power has to go towards survival, and even your best innovations give you an edge (instead of guaranteeing success and dominance over the non-human world).

Also, a lot of these innovations only come through death, which slows the process down. A lot of people had to shit themselves to death before it was widespread knowledge which berries were poison. A lot of people lost their hands or their babies to wolves on the rocky road to domesticating the dog. But eventually you stack enough survival innovations on each other, and you'll have enough free time not spent surviving, that you can start managing resources. And from there you get civilizations.

Hunter-gathering in no way implies a lack of problem-solving, of trying to make things better and more efficient. In fact, it's quite the opposite - we only got to societies because our hunter-gatherer ancestors kept sharpening the knife of human ingenuity against the whetstone Nature and all the dangers she provides. And really, we couldn't have done any of it without sweat or flame.