Being on a Near Eastern archaeological academic listserv, I've read a fair number of papers on the topic. Sadly, the agro-urban archaeologists who write them have at best a marginal understanding of hunting cultures or range management in dry environments. Hence, that conclusion is not much more than a presumption upon their part based upon what they can currently measure. Their theories have yet to be examined against the model I'm proposing which is based in soil science and vegetation management as influence climate behavior and what happens when the apex predator changes from a people to other animals. As a modern analogue to the process I'm discussing, check out the Drake Exclosure. Not as much really is known about aboriginal hunter/herdsman cultures as we'd like to think, simply because they leave such an ephemeral footprint. Heck, we're still revising upward the aboriginal numbers here in North America, even though those events were but hundreds instead of thousands of years ago because that information is so sketchy. Steven Simms has done a good job of collecting that information here in North America.
War came later than the events of which I'm speaking as the root causes of desertification. The arrangement of singular and collective plurals Hebrew in Genesis 4:8 speaks of a process of assimilation that eventually killed Abel, one at a time, as Abel became Cain. Instead of a childish story of "don't kill your brother over an offering" it is instead a challenging multi-layered tale that we have missed, because we are Cain.
Hm. Do you know how many so called "academics" are nothing but a shills for certain political agenda and whore themselves for the tenure and keeping of their $180K salary. Many are criminals who deliberately spread dangerous lies that are used to justify murder of innocent people. I have seen it on many academic lists. Lists are MODERATED and operate like a wolf pack. Administrators maintain behind the scene communication with the shills who attack any dissenting opinion that exposes fraudulent information. Dissenting posts are severely edited or blocked. So the final result is fine tuned "discussion" that provides false impression of uniform view. It is shameful, but the fact of life. Even Wikipedia often provides more facts than many "academic" liservs.