An important part of the Christ-Centered model for Early Genesis is a modified version of the Tablet Theory for the origin of these early accounts. That is, Moses edited the first chapters from a series of tablets he inherited from his ancestors. Thus, the discovery of other Ancient Near East (ANE) stories which pre-date Moses doesn't mean that the Israelites borrowed and adapted those stories from other cultures later. Instead, their ancestors came from the same region and retained their own independent accounts of what happened.
One question raised by this theory is whether the earliest accounts had a long oral transmission period. Since in the Christ-centered model Adam is a figure of Christ (Rom. 5:14) and not the sole male progenitor of the human race, Adam doesn't have to be extremely far back in time. There were already humans around when Adam was formed and placed in the garden. Still, Adam came along at least 6,000 years ago, and 12,000 might be closer to the mark when you consider that Ussherian Dating methods will give only minimum dates which are almost certainly too young. This raises questions about how the accounts could have been transmitted long before the known invention of writing able to carry a narrative of such detail and complexity. I am going to ultimately answer this question with a "Deus ex Machina you can believe in" (if you are a believer) because it is already a part of the text. It is something that people have missed on this question even though it is "hidden in plain sight." Skip to the end if you don't care to wade through my exploration of the issue.
This question applies in particular to the first two accounts in Genesis, that of the "Heavens and the Earth" and "Adam". Those are the accounts which would seem to be too old for written transmission. For the genealogy in chapter five (see this for commentary on number pattern) you would need only the name of the ancestor, the number of years until they started having sons, and the number of years they lived afterward. This is the sort of thing which could be committed to memory, but would also not require a full system of writing in order to record. People have recorded the amount of time which has gone by and how long their ancestors lived even without a complete written language. The account of Noah would be close enough in time to the known emergence of writing so as not to be an issue, though I place the flood somewhat earlier than the traditional dates.
The first account, basically chapter one and the first few verses of chapter two, is a candidate for a long oral transmission period. Not only is it short, and could possibly be sung, but there are stories with similar elements even in distant cultures which had no known contact with any ANE civilization. It may be that the account in chapter one pre-dates Adam!
Nevertheless, the account of Adam in chapters two through four isn't a good candidate for oral transmission. It is much longer, with many specific facts and great complexity. Therefore, most people consider that for the tablet theory to make sense, there would have to have been some sort of written language able to communicate narratives available to Adam or his near descendants. I am not one of those people if Adam was indeed formed a mere six thousand years ago for the folowing reason: If we are to take seriously the idea that the descendants of Adam had exceptional lifespans as stated in the text then oral transmission over two thousand years becomes a more reasonable proposition because it represents only three to five generations.
The end of the account in chapter four hints that it was compiled after the third generation after Adam for the line of Seth, but after the the seventh generation after the line of Cain. Of course Cain was older than Seth and that could explain one additional generation. The rest of the difference could be a result of disparity in life-spans between the line of Seth which stayed in the presence of the LORD until the flood, and that of Cain which was exiled from His presence. After the flood, the LORD wasn't regularly present with any group. This is when, according to the text, lifespans in the rest of the line of Adam dropped precipitously.
If Adam was formed 6,000 years ago and the account was compiled near the end of or just after the life of Enosh, then it was written roughly 4000-4,500 years ago. Narrative writing was unquestionably available at that time. We may consider 1,500 to 2,000 years a very long time for oral transmission to occur, but given the exceptional lifespans, this was simply a case of writing down a story you heard from your grandfather!
Yet as I mentioned earlier, there is reason to believe that the Ussherian date for Adam is a minimum date, and the life of Adam was much further back in time, perhaps even as much as twice as far back as his calculations showed. Thus Adam could have been formed as long as twelve thousand years ago. This would mean that the original accounts were compiled as long as 10,000 years ago - 8,000 B.C. A date of 6,000 B.C. may be a good median within the range of possible dates. These dates are well before any writing capable of producing such a narrative was available, so far as we know.
On the other hand, humans have been making symbols to communicate things for a long time. It turns out that the same thirty-two symbols were used in caves across Europe for almost 30,000 years.
This wasn't a true written language. It may have been more like a code, like the Hobo Code from the American Depression. The La Paseiga Inscription looks like an early (Ice Age) effort to string a series of symbols together into a larger meaning, but doesn't rise to the level of a true written language either. The point is that there was widespread use of symbols to communicate things for a very long time. It isn't inconceivable that one group took that principle further prior to the known development of writing.
The mainstream view is that true writing did not emerge until around 3200 B.C. in the Sumerian city of Uruk. Before that, there were just symbols for numbers and goods to be sold, so any writing from before this time could not tell a narrative. Contesting this are finds like the Dispilio Tablet and other evidence for something called "Vinca" or "Old European Script" from around 5000 B.C. It is believed that those Europeans had contact with either people from Anatolia or the Caucus region, which would connect more ancient writing to the area in which I believe Adam's near descendants lived. Still, it is unknown whether or not "Old European Script" was a true language. The debate goes back and forth and no one can translate inscriptions from it.
The first written word whose meaning we know is from Gobekli Tepe 11,000 years ago. The symbol for "God" in Luwian Hieroglyphics appears on a pillar there, along with those of several other words. That doesn't prove there was at that time a whole written language capable of relating a narrative though, because the symbol could have been adopted much later into a written language which doesn't show up in full bloom for many thousands of years. But it is astounding enough to think that the symbol for "God" and other words from 11,000 years ago shows up in a written language from less than 4,000 years ago. The meaning of those symbols was preserved for 7,000 years!
Despite these tantalizing hints, I can only conclude that the case has not yet been made that a written language of some kind existed 8-12 thousand years ago. But these facts also suggest that it isn't unreasonable to think that there could have been one. Yet there is another possibility which could apply to the question of transmission of these early accounts. This is the "Deus ex Machina you can believe in" that I mentioned earlier. And it has been staring us in the face all along. The text of early Genesis indicates that until chapter six, when He declared that He would not "strive with the men forever", that the LORD God routinely fellow-shipped with the line of Adam, sans those from Cain. This was what Cain was complaining about when he was being "driven from your presence" after he murdered Abel. Before the flood, it wasn't unusual for the person of God, in anthropogenic form, to walk with man. At least those men of Adam.
Thus the normal limitations which apply to oral transmission don't apply in this case. The story could have been transmitted from generation to generation, but there was also Someone present who lived through all of those generations who also knew the true and correct version of events. Noah didn't need to wonder if the account of Adam he had was distorted over time. The LORD God could clarify any issues, and tell it just the way that He wanted it told.
I therefore conclude that it is irrelevant to this question whether the near descendants of Adam had a written language. The normal limitations of oral transmission don't apply until one gets to Noah and his near descendants. At that point the objection becomes moot because true written language is either present, or in the case of the most distant date for the flood in my model, soon present.
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