I'm not claiming that the opposite from the original claim was the truth, I'm doing the same as you and saying be careful not to project your current feelings o

I'm not claiming that the opposite from the original claim was the truth, I'm doing the same as you and saying be careful not to project your current feelings onto a past that we can never truly know. No one can say the people of the past felt one way or not, that's my main point. The other point I'm adding on is that people are inherently varied in their mindsets and it's only very recently in history we've had such an equal opportunity to share our feelings and hope to have them heard. I would add one thing as well: In many societies there's been a great reverence given to animals and their slaughter ritualized or governed by cultural rules. To me this suggests at the very least that people have always had some sense of the gravity of their actions and felt a need to make sense of and tame their feelings by externalizing or controlling them.