This article points to a mysterious transition between prehistory and history and proposes a hypothesis to solve it. I don’t have to prove here that the hypothesis is correct. Elsewhere I argue for it, mind you, dividing up the labour (links below).
Precisely because the transition is mysterious, what you say about how “It's just what people do” is false. What we do naturally is what we did for millions of years in the Stone Age. History and behavioural modernity are comparatively artificial, which is the mystery in question. So there you begged the question.
I’d agree, though, that the talk of mass fraud could get caught up in dubious conspiratorial thinking. At the very least, civilization would rest on gross theocratic errors and misunderstandings, if not wholly on outright lies.
Also, it’s a non sequitur to say that because (by hypothesis) civilization is based on a fraud, therefore civilization is bad, and we should be uncivilized. Nowhere do I argue that, so that’s an oversimplification on your part. On the contrary, on existentialist grounds I defend at length the Promethean, Faustian audacity of the civilized rebellion against the godless wilderness (links below, among many others).
