People are not "destined" to live in complex societies or develop trappings of "sprawling civilizations". That is to say that there exists no cultural or ecological imperative that people, through time, will develop large, centralized, socially complex and sedentary communities and the other traits of civilizations.

Hunter-gatherers, whether in complex societies (I'm thinking Northwest Coast) or simple ones (e.g. most of California, the Plateau and Great Basin), were successful in passing on sufficient genetic material to their abundant offspring to develop large populations. So "simpler" societies were perfectly successful by that measure.

Also, bear in mind, that it is only in the relatively recent past, surely within the last ~11,000 years, that anyone has lived in cities (and they were few for a long period of time). So for the prehistory of anatomically modern humans, "sprawling civilizations " was the late -developing exception, not the rule.

Finally, in history or prehistory we lack tools to discern with any degree of reliability why things did not happen in the past.