>There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it?

It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.