I'm coming here only with the works of Sebastian Junger ("Tribe," mainly) and I've got a rough understanding of the writings of "Apo," which basically say that the development of capitalism is not really a "natural" thing that developed in anthropology, but instead developed, I suppose, at some point in recent history, mainly (I suppose?) from Europe to the "Middle East."
Meaning that, in short, in natural, "tribal" societies, people tend to do everything communally, right? At some point, some villager in France stopped needing to just do whatever he did to survive, support his family and donating to the Church or what have you, and began opening up a bank and charging interest, right? Or having a business based around not supporting the community, but just accumulating money.
So if that is at all correct, are there any writings in this rough direction from a scholar as to when "capitalism" (I appreciate that is a really ambiguous term and I'm using it pretty vaguely) began?
Prehistoric peoples indeed tended to have more egalitarian communities. But it's not like the development of historical communities went from this straight to capitalism. Although capitalist elements can be recognised in ancient and medieval societies, it is important to remember that even the idea of 'the economy' is something that is a relatively recent development. So for instance in the ancient Greek world, there was no abstract notion of the economy as a greater system. As Leopold Migeotte writes in his book The Economy of the Greek Cities: "We may find this surprising, given that nowadays we instinctively regard economic activities as cogs in a greater whole (...)" (p. 29). Private enterprises, and other activities we now regard as part of the economy, definitely existed (there are ancient sources about merchants, shipowners, moneylenders, and their complex relationships), but all these different activities we now call economic, weren't connected.
There is no definitive point in time where we can all of a sudden say: 'And now we have capitalism!'. It was a gradual process involving changes in trading, accumulation of wealth, industrialisation, and maybe most importantly, a change in mentality. In his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber wrote that the rise of protestantism was a major factor in the evolution of capitalism. The protestant work ethic and their ideas about the relationship between secular work and religious beliefs were, according to Weber, very important factors contributing to the development of capitalism.
The book by Weber is a good place to start if you're interested in this. But since this topic is not necessarily clear-cut in a historical way, a lot of the theories will be philosophically motivated and of course open for debate. Other places you might find useful information is the writings of Adam Smith (who is sometimes called 'the father of capitalism') or the book Civilisation and Capitalism by the historian Fernand Braudel.
Humans survival has always relied on competition. I would say the advent of primitive technology, the ability to travel long distances and trade between other tribes and societies created value and a market place. Human beings natural instinct to compete and advance sounds like capitalism in a nutshell to me.
Great book by the way. There was something spot on about his explanation of the unique challenges veterans face coming home. Understandably he gets it way better than most.