From Happiness to Ethics

Why can't you find ethics from an ancient world? It seems to me the development of Ethics and morality would take more than one life time to Debate, Talk about, Get Confused, Debate some more, Write some books, get the books read by the world, then have the world accept said beliefs, and then Ethics would be transmitted to all cultures and people groups. For this to happen in one life time would be impossible. Also those having the time to debate the ethics and morality that the rest of the population should adhere to would have a lot of control over the population in their one generation. It seems you have to base as I do your ethics and morality on a people that have come before, at least as a jumping point as to what should be discussed. Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation. What do you think?