I notice that some anthropologist believe all humans were egalitarian in the past, and others believe inequality was more common they we currently we think with hunter gathers.
This seems to along with anthropologist using modern hunter gathers as way to look at the past which is now considered not a best practice from what I read. Which this influenced the egalitarian hunter gathers idea even more.
You would have to first define a default environment. Just because it's in the past doesn't mean it's the default. If hunter-gatherers had grocery stores, and everything that comes along with that, then it would probably look a lot like today's world. We tend to think of development as linear, the past is less developed and the future is more developed, but that doesn't really make sense. If we nuke everything and reset to the stone age, are we still more developed? History is an ebb and flow of development. It's not always progressive. We sometimes regress.
If a past state isn't always the state of the past, and states don't develop linearly, then there is no default. Just a series of different states that exist at any given time depending on the conditions we face. Even within the current state of organization there exists different forms. Capitalism isn't 100% one kind of organization. It's the predominant one, but not the only one. Within capitalism you can have people who organize differently under it.