I am not a historian, only a reader, so my knowledge has plenty of inaccuracies. However, I believe what you are saying for the Neolithic -> Bronze Age transiti

I am not a historian, only a reader, so my knowledge has plenty of inaccuracies. However, I believe what you are saying for the Neolithic -> Bronze Age transition makes sense in the British Isles and Western Europe, as these are the last remnants of Neolithic society in Europe. The Bronze Age doesn't begin in Britain until about 2500-2000 BCE. Thats a full thousand years after the Bronze Age had already begun in the Near East and Egypt. So this displacement from more modern (and militarily advanced) cultures makes sense. The gradual adaptation of bronze that I was referring to was referring to the origins of the Bronze Age in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, and Greece.