Farming fed more people.
More people = more warriors.
So the hunter-gatherers were conquered by the farmers.
Farming was the nuclear bomb of the bronze age.
Either you had it, or you were ruled by those who did.
I suggest you read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. Suffice to say, the actual history of the invention of farming was anything but this nuclear explosion type event. This model was created as a hypothetical, scholars trying to imagine how it actually happened. The real archaeological and ethnographic record paints a very, very different picture.
Ironically we don't see much evidence of infectious disease in hunter gatherers. Now of course this only talks about those diseases we see evidence of in bones, but until we started keeping livestock and living in large close groups there doesn't seem to have been much.
Obviously there still was disease. You're never going to be able to find evidence of an infected wound or pneumonia in the skeletal remains, but the big killers like smallpox, measels, leprosy, etc. don't develop until later.
Of course for those humans in environments that supported mosquitos malaria was still a huge problem.
Well yeah, because it really sucked. Early agrarians were much less healthy, suffering from malnutrition and diseases that hunter-gatherers did not.
People persisted though. And over ten thousand years they eventually won out. Turns out that being able to store enough food to last all winter is a huge long term advantage. Specialization was an even greater advantage (that also took millennia to develop).
And the issue with trying to put the genie back in the bottle is that if one group left that money on the table another group would come along and pick it up.
"We had a good harvest this year. Way too much for us to use. I wonder if our neighbors would be willing to part with some of their excess pelts if we gave them..."
NEW ACHIEVEMENT
Commerce
You have something I want, and I have something you want. A fairly simple exchange can't possibly get out of hand, right? RIGHT?!
Reward
Capitalism will ensure you never live a peaceful life. Not that you had a peaceful life before. Let's just say your descendants will be forced into labor if they simply want to have shelter.
Capitalism will ensure you never live a peaceful life.
Isn't a big allure of capitalism the kind-of comfort trap of desiring modern amenities enough to voluntarily engage with the industrial system?
Also, any proper Marxist is going to tell you that capitalism is a fundamental stepping stone to post-scarcity utopian communism. Capitalist mode of production generates the surpluses necessary for the kind of leisure enjoyed by a professional managerial class that ultimately forms a socialist bureaucracy. You don't get your libraries and your hospitals and your trains without a pivot to capitalism.
Also, anyone who has done the proper deep wilderness style campaign can tell you that its anything but peaceful. You're exposed to the elemental whims, your livelihood is predicated on ecological changes beyond your comprehension much less control, and you lack some really fundamental human achievements like modern language, art, and music. Hell, you might not even enjoy the benefit of simple machines like the screw or the wheel.
And that's not even the really attractive achievements. Ask anyone with advanced tetanus or glaucoma how many years of restaurant work they'd be willing to endure for medical relief.
I mean, find a nice piece of land, build your shelter, no one bothers you about property tax or reports you to the HOA. Maybe a land ownership dispute, but even if you lose, as long as you live past that, you can setup somewhere else.
But seriously, thinking about a species-appropriate lifestyle for humans, since we can't seem to keep societies stable, resulting in environment destruction, death and suffering.
Considering that we have a background in 100 - 150 people communities, maybe the ting/ding of ancient germans is the most ideal we can get.