Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-40137302-20190714134242/@comment-40091089-20190714191253

The reason no one talks about anything prior to that is because there was an apocalyptic event that occurred 400 years before the start of the series, which wiped out half of  the world's population. Naturally, lots of history would be lost in such an event.

But, the world is certainly older. The Witches of Sin that were active 400 years ago were confirmed not to be the first generation. Correspondingly, in Bonds of Ice, Melakuera mentioned that he'd seen silver haired half elves bring calamity many times before, implying that Satella was not the first.

Also, while I can't find any references to it on this wiki, I could have sworn that Gusteko, Vollachia, and Lugunica were said somewhere to be over 1,000 years old. If nothing else, Kararagi (which is 300-400 years old) is supposed to be the youngest of the four great nations.

As a final note, if we assume that Puck is literally Emilia's father (as he claims), that would make him Fortuna's brother. Since Puck was active in Echidna's day, that would make him and Fortuna at least 400 years old. With that in mind, the fact that Petelgeuse considers Fortuna "a child" in terms of age suggests that both himself and the Re:Zero world are much older than 400 years. That being said, Puck being Emilia's father doesn't make much sense in this timeline (given that Puck became a spirit 400 years ago, and Emilia was a child 100 years ago), so it should be taken with a grain of salt.