I think you may be overstating this. The archeological evidence is pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other, and that there was a lot of variety and complexity in the way prehistoric societies organized themselves. Also, there are some societies that exist in 2025 which proved scary enough examples of what's possible.
There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.
> pretty clear that prehistorical lifestyles weren't just small tribes slaughtering each other,
Well, that's sounds quite logical. When you kill people, they usually fight back. Very strongly fight back. So you have to expect something big to make it worth it. But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
> But small very undeveloped tribes had nothing of such, so they have no incentives to slaughter each other.
With neither size nor technology to make a lasting impact, the ones that got slaughtered didn't exactly leave much in archeological evidence behind for us to find.
As for GP's point, obviously those people weren't bred for battle with others. All the tiny tribes would happily frolic in the forest or whatever small prehistoric tribes did when they weren't starving, but eventually they'd grow in size, hit a size limit leading to a new tribe splitting off, etc.; over time, the number of tribes grew to the point that they started to bump into each other and contest the same resources, leading to the obvious outcome.
It was later, when humanity accumulate knowledge about resources gathering and processing, about nature and how to deal with it to not to die all the time. Then yeas, tribes were becoming larger, wealthier, more stationary. But before that there were very few people, the tribes were nomadic with virtually no alternatives and had nothing of value. At least nothing so valuable that it would be easier to get it by attacking another tribe, rather than by simply moving a couple of dozen kilometers away.
I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies. Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation?
I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
Editing in a TL;DR: imagine you and your friends are thrown back in time to year 20 000 BC or thereabout. Imagine you find the nearest tribe of humans, and by magical means are able to understand and speak their language. Imagine you go to their chief and propose to form a confederacy, and ponder what would stop them from replying "ugh" and bashing your head in with a club. Compare with a closest analog to today, and where the difference comes from.
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> I'm genuinely convinced that prehistoric humans, being literally the same species as us, were just as capable as us in the ability to thoughtfully construct their societies.
I agree. We're basically the same people as we were before, hardware and firmware, +/- lactose intolerance and some extra mutations that, without modern medicine, would prohibit one from successfully reproducing. With that in mind...
> Like, why, when they bumped into each other, couldn't they have formed a confederation?
Because they most likely couldn't have even conceptualized this that long ago, much less make it work.
A "confederacy" isn't some built-in human feeling. It's advanced technology. Social technology, but technology nonetheless. In a way, it's merely a more advanced form of a bunch of elders getting together to deal with a problem affecting all of their tribes - but this is like saying passing around crude drawing on stones is basically a bit less advanced e-mail or international postal network. As an advanced social technology, a confederacy has a lot of prerequisites - including writing, deep specialization of labor (allowing for both rulers and thinkers to thrive), hierarchical governance, a set of traditions (religious or otherwise) that solidify the hierarchical governance structure and some early iteration of a justice system, literate ruling class, etc.; all of those are but a few nodes in the "tech tree" that leads to a confederacy, and more importantly, enables scaling the society up to the point we can even talk about a confederacy as we define the term today.
> I think instead of labeling them as children of nature or starving savages warring with everything in their vicinity, it makes most sense to see them as more or less similar to ourselves.
We still are children of nature. We're not starving because of all the advancement in science, technology and social technologies we've accumulated over the past couple millenia.
Consider that it is only recently - within the last 150 years - we finally stopped going to war over land and natural resources. Human nature didn't change in that time. What changed was that we've expanded to the point every place on Earth's surface has someone staking a claim to it, that the knowledge of these claims quickly becomes known to other groups; we then fought it out in 1914-1918 and then for the last time, in 1939-1945, then most countries accepted agreements to keep the borders as they are, and then we invented nuclear weapons and froze the borders via MAD.
The modern world is a beautiful but fragile place. If we let any of the supporting structures - whether social or technological or military - snap, the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards, and the few people that survive it will be back to prehistoric savagery. Not because they'd suddenly get dumber, but because they'd have lost all the social and technological structures that makes humanity what it is today, and they'd have to rebuild it from scratch, the hard way.
There are also societies which have blatant arbitrary authoritarian rule which seem to be well in the 21st century. I doubt that faith in the rule of law is the only thing keeping our societies together.