Thank you for another very excellent exposition. One very important development that is noticeably absent in it, though, is slavery. [Economics is an area in which I have some expertise.]

Economically, slaves are capital — not labor. In economic terms, slaves are machines. Enslaving people creates capital out of thin air, as it were. That in turn creates profits that allow for the further development of the process of capital accumulation — and the broader social power that goes with it.

Your narrative did mention the emergence of voluntary relations of protection from raiders. If those efforts at protection were unsuccessful, enslavement could have followed directly as a consequence. Where the protectors were successful, on can imagine that quickly transforming into protection ‘rackets’, thence into outright enslavement ‘from within’. Slaves probably built the first walled fortifications, from which cities proper emerged, from which ‘great’ cities emerged, from which empires emerged.

Also, it was not made quite clear how writing/accounting created knowledge that was a basis of power for those who possessed it over those who did not.