I appreciate the references but I'm guessing they don't fully support the claims you made above, at least not as strongly as you're making them seem. While the

I appreciate the references but I'm guessing they don't fully support the claims you made above, at least not as strongly as you're making them seem. While they talk about egalitarianism and resisting domineering members, and various organizational structures, they don't establish that people followed "correct" individuals or that violence increases with increased population growth/agriculture/weapons. I think I'm safe to say that there is plenty of evidence for violence that predates agriculture and modern society, even if agriculture and nation-states increased the scale and visibility of such violence overall. I think replacing "nasty, brutish, and short" with its opposite "noble savage" ideal is probably just as mistaken of a projection from literature. Human nature doesn't seem to change much throughout history, tools might just make that violence more efficient and more visible. I don't think your thesis is fully wrong, but I don't think it is fully right either, which was my point in pushing back against the earlier statements you made.