My assumption is that we basically did have a population explosion that continues today. Humans, not knowing such a thing as scarcity as a long term phenomenon

My assumption is that we basically did have a population explosion that continues today. Humans, not knowing such a thing as scarcity as a long term phenomenon exists (aka just go somewhere else to get more) over consumed the local fauna as we entered new regions of abundance. The confluence of environment changing as we left the last ice age along with consumption pressures seems like a perfect storm to have a population explosion that leads to mass shortages. A good metaphor to me is like a small bacterial colony that explodes when the environment around it provides a really great breeding ground. However instead of dying off we basically hijacked the system to continue our growth.