Vinterland

By human-like I mean an intelligent creature that displays similar intelligence and ability to communicate, and maybe engages in art like music and painting. They may have achieved living in communities similar to how early humans lived and possibly established a civilization; with religious ceremonies, laws, and jobs for the community.

The time period could be any time before the human common ancestor evolved. Since mammals evolved about 200 million years ago the proposed creature could have been mammal, but could also have been a primitive Mollusk, perhaps like the Octopus, which are invertebrate and rarely leave traces in sediment. The octopus is very smart compared to other Mollusks:

The question of "If there was a community of organisms with human-like intelligence and they acheived many things, then where are the fossils?"
...is one I cannot answer. I think it may be rare for an organisms to become part of the sediment compacted with rock and fossilized. I've read articles by scientists that they have not discovered fossils of even 1% of all animals that ever lived.

There are a lot of other questions here that you and some of you may be asking: Are fossils that rare...could an invetebrate evolved to be as intelligent as us.... I am not a scientist so I will let you discuss. This can also be fun topic, but it would be great to hear it from more knowledable people.

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And on we walked. Suddenly we heard a voice crying, "This is the sea. This is the deep sea. This is the vast and mighty sea." And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur.
And my soul said, "Let us pass on. He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment."
—Gibran Khalil Gibran, “The Greater Sea.”