alt Hacker News> 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.
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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. 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.
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.