With bronze age tools?
These cities would not have been hives and living in a tribe would not have been the free and solitary existence you seem to imagine.
The people in the cities would have had more food, more resources, more safety and space then the people in the HG tribes. There was a reason people moved into cities and it was not because they couldn't move their couch.
There is no reason to take a condescending tone with me, sir-my reply to you was not intended to be anything but a remark in a respectful discussion-however, what you seem to think I “imagine” has been greatly influenced not only by reading those studies I referred to, but by the husband of one of my cousins who was an archaeologist-a Paleo-Indian expert.
He died of MS 30 years ago. Excavating/studying ruins gave him a major interest in the decline and fall of early cities in the Americas and the disappearance of people from those cities in ancient times and he studied them until the last weeks of his life.
He brought my 1st hubby and I on 5 digs that he was conducting on what remains of some of those cities in several parts of Mexico and the Southwestern US. We worked right along with his team, sifting dirt and carefully preserving every little bit of everything-of course, only the archaeologists were allowed to move or otherwise handle any human remains-and always with proper respect-but we could hold a bit of pottery beautifully decorated with painted designs, or a perfectly shaped/knapped arrowhead less than 2 inches long-you just couldn’t keep any of that stuff...
If you think those cities were not “hives”-please visit some of the ruins in Mexico and the Southwestern US that are open to the public-they even look like hives, with their multi-family dwellings that had several stories packed together, the ruins of wall-to-wall shops that look like a modern strip center, etc-you couldn’t cram people in together like that and keep everyone fed and in harmony-you still can’t...
It was an experience I would not have missed for anything. My cousin’s husband believed crowding caused chaos, just like the scientists who did the experiments-he based that belief on what his research had shown, including but not limited to evidence of conflict and violent death in the ruins of those places.
One of the most interesting things archaeologists find when they are able to follow the tracks of those people who got the hell out of Dodge is that those folks went into less inhabited areas and formed smaller settlements among themselves, or with people from other tribes. they didn’t return to a total hunter/gatherer way of life-they did continue to farm, keep animals and have an active trade network, but they did not always expand enough to overwhelm the natural resources, for whatever reason, but the natural climate cycles eventually caused people to move around-no SUVs needed...
“With bronze age tools?” Well-there were probably not any workers comp adjustors/case managers at that time-but a head injury is still a head injury-I seriously doubt that workers back then bashed themselves in the head to cause the kind of injuries shown, so unless almost everyone fell on their head from every ladder or wall-someone else had to do it. I’ve had clients who tried to fake comp injuries-it is not easy to do without getting busted...
Most of my clients have always been injured construction workers-falls from ladders, injuries from tools like hammers, chisels, saws, etc likely haven’t changed much-just that some tools have power now-you would not take a reciprocating saw or a nailgun to your head-an accident is possible, but it would be rare today-and even less likely in an age without power tools...