But they are not referencing Paleolithic mobile hunter-gatherers. People who live in villages, have chiefs, etc., have vastly different social structures that allow for different things. By the time of Lewis and Clark, most native cultures were cultivating at least some agriculture and were not truly mobile foragers in the same sense as our ancient ancestors. In addition, cities are not what we had for 97% of human history, nor villages, nor chiefs either.
Ancient anthropology is a different beast than even that of the past 5k years. You can't make assumptions based on very different social dynamics because that's what we see in the last 2-3% of human history.
As to what might be the antidote to domination-based inclinations? Dr. Peter Grey says play and playfulness.
"The more I learned about band hunter-gatherers the more I became interested in their egalitarian ways of living. Indeed, another term commonly used by anthropologists for such societies is egalitarian societies. They are by far the most egalitarian human societies that have ever been found (Ingold, 1999). Their way of life required continuous cooperation and sharing within the band and, especially during times of hardship, sharing between bands.
They hunted and gathered cooperatively, cared for children cooperatively, and shared food and other resources. They did not have chiefs or big men, nor bosses and followers. They made decisions affecting the whole band through long discussions aimed at consensus. It was apparently taboo in such societies to tell another person what to do, as to do so would be to act as if you were in some way better than them or had power over them.
In brief, the play theory is that band hunter gatherers, no matter where they lived, learned over their long history to promote cooperation and sharing by fostering the playful side of their human nature. As I explained in previous letters, social play requires cooperation, fairness, and the setting aside of dominance.
The reports to anthropologists, including those in our survey, convinced me that essentially all of social life for hunter-gatherers was suffused with play. Their games and dances were highly cooperative and playful, their myths and religious practices were playful. Their approaches to hunting and gathering were playful. Even their means of dealing with disruptive members of their group was largely playful and went further only when play did not work. And perhaps most significantly, their young educated themselves largely through play and grew up in a spirit of play."
