Traditional Christian teaching is that death entered the world because of Adam's transgression. (Gen 2:17, Romans 5:12).
Now, you could read these passages and say that the death being spoken of was not a physical death, but a spiritual death or separation from God, and that the story of Genesis is an account of the point at which the evolving hominid reached a point where he became accountable before God for his moral conduct.
If you do this, you are basically taking the Urantian point of view, which states that life evolved until a point had been reached where humans were sufficiently developed to be "uplifted."
Christ then comes in the meridian of time to bring a second "uplift," if you will, allowing for an escape of the evolutionary bonds of death.
I suppose you could morph Christianity in this way to make it work with evolution (which is what the Urantia book does), but you have to pretty much abandon traditional Christian teachings to do it. Thus the conflict.
"primitive goat herders"
Actually, we're evolving away from intelligence. Ancient history shows that they were much more intelligent than today's secularist. I know they didn't have computers, cars, telephones, or even electricity, however, when those inventions came along, so did pollution. The "primitive goat herders" weren't exploiting the earth's resources.