I just finished The Dawn of Everything and found it fascinating. In fact, I recently wrote this story about the personal autonomy aspects, although there's so much in there, I could probably write 10 stories on different aspects.

https://medium.com/inside-of-elle-beau/personal-autonomy-is-important-to-humans-cd2ea2ae495

My understanding of Paleolithic groups is that there was almost no competition with other bands. The population density was very low and food was ample. As with contemporary hunter-gatherers, if there was a conflict, the band would just move to another part of their territory until the conflict was resolved or the other group moved on as well. As noted in The Dawn of Everything (and other writings on this topic) ancient humans seem to have travelled much more often and much further than contemporary peoples. Going somewhere a month or two's journey away was routine - made possible in part because of the freedom to leave your community and feel you would be welcome in faraway lands (one of TDOE central elements of early human history). But also, bonds of mutual aid that existed not just with immediate neighbors, but those who were far away as well.

"Among people living in small, widely dispersed bands of interconnected families

likely to interact again and again, prosocial impulses—meaning tendencies to voluntarily do things that benefit others—are likely to be reciprocated or rewarded. The generous person’s well-being and that of his or her family depended more on maintaining the web of social relationships that sustained them through good times and bad than on the immediate outcome of a particular transaction. The people you treat generously this year, with the loan of a tool or gift of food, are the same people you depend on next year when your waterholes dry up or game in your home range disappears.7 Over their lifetimes people would encounter and re-encounter their neighbors, not necessarily often, but again and again. Failures to reciprocate would result in loss of allies or, worse still, social exclusion."

Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. Mothers and Others (p. 6). Harvard University Press. Kindle Edition.

It's not really until we get well into the Neolithic and people are more sedentary that we start to see greater conflict between Us and Them. I will check out your story however, and comment upon it directly.