I am not claiming nomadic hunter gatherer societies were safe spaces, but there is a recurring misconception: people assume the nomadic lifestyle was harder and less desirable, otherwise humans wouldn't have made the transition to agrarian society.
Could perhaps slavery possibly be the bigger reason agrarian lifestyle "outcompeted" the nomadic lifestyle?
It's easy to proclaim a higher mean life quality in agrarian society if we discount the lives of the slaves.
With nomadic tribes, there is a constant churn of neighbor tribes, so hypothetical nomadic slavery would be much easier to escape than say the Roman Empire, where only near the boundaries of the Empire one might durably escape.
In an agrarian society neighboring villages etc use the same kinds of marks to discriminate the slaves from the citizens, so even if you escaped your master and the village, you'd end up needing to pass countless other villages which would recognize your assigned status, and turn you in for some reward / improved bilateral relations / ...
Today countless research indicates that permaculture, agroforestry, etc. are more productive than monoculture.
It is perfectly possible for nomadic cultures to be more efficient, and to provide more free time (a dangerous thing, since infighting and warring takes time), yet be "outcompeted" by systems of slavery!
For the leaders (of either nomadic tribes, or agrarian empires), the agrarian empire affords much more fruits of course!
This is an idea I have not encountered before but makes an enormous amount of sense. I wonder how one would create a hypothesis that could then be shown or not I the archeological record.
Slavery was certainly an integral part of both the Ancient Greek and Ancient Roman societies. It has historically been associated with the concept of a person being property which rather requires that one has a concept of property.
Some hunters have elders rather than dedicated full time priests, and they can veer more rabbinical; they've got the stories and pass down the classics as food for thought and discussion.
On a superstition v superstition basis it's hard to get a photo finish between them and a Bishop.
Religion is not exclusive to agrarian societies. Indeed, much of proto-indo-European religion (ie the OG “sky father” [1]) was developed on the steppes in a pastoral lifestyle.
This allows the formation of a priest class that can tell you what the sky father wants you to do.
They may have had to but it need not be because it led to more calories for them.