It could be that the technological civilization arose extremely quickly, and only in certain limited geographical areas before the population could grow to overwhelm the earth with industrial production. They might have had a completely different morality that led to this pattern. It was before the founding of all religions we have today.
Maybe, but I doubt that as technology seems needs a lot of specialists. You don't have time to focus on one small area in depth if you also need to farm/hunt/gather. We need generations for someone to come up with the idea of writing, make it better, educate kids in it... And of course before the printing press books took a lot of time and so even if you created something passing it to someone else is hard.
Primitive people were not stupid, they just needed a lot of time to figure out things that we now think are obvious.
I think you under emphasized the first part of your point. Living in a modern community is easy mode. Without that, mass time and effort are needed to subsist