I've hit Mr Baxter once or twice here and there, but one thing Stone Spring does sketch out: that not all Epipalaeolithic cultures were communal utopiai. The book is based on the interactions between hierarchs and would-be hierarchs, set as it is in the 7000s BC, given that Jericho already exists. In his book, also: the Pretani exist.
So let's talk Aeon's latest - on those pre-agricultural hierarchies. Its examples, which Spaniards recorded, are from south Florida and the Pacific North West. Our midwit takes on the stone-age noble savage come from huntergatherers we've met in the nineteenth century (if not twentieth!). By that time we'd only seen them in this planet's most marginal environments, like the Kalahari. Or in the Australian desert, or Patagonia - we could add. Quite a lot of them had been kicked out of nicer places, beforehand, at that. Back in the sixteenth century some huntergatherers yet survived in more-fertile homelands.
These stone-age men (and women!) might not have done much farming, beyond digging up roots. But they did practice aquaculture. They "farmed" fish. Aeon notes the old Chilean desert coast; I recall quite a few books discussing the preceramic Atacama peoples' emphasis on rope and net.
The article points to about 30kBC as when Eurasians started being VERY lavish when burying some of their dead. This, to Aeon, implies hierarchy: such riches had to be procured. It also precedes the move into Beringia (but postdates Australia...).
All that said, I remain skeptical that we shall find very much evidence of hierarchical protocivilisation before all that, in Eurasia or in Africa. If we do find such, we shall also need to explain how come it didn't "take", south of the Sahara.
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