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it's hard not to, but we tend to interpret what we wish to be true. We want early humans to 'naturally' be the way we want to be today. For example, our culture has such a macho pro meat bias that we easily embraced Dart's 'killer ape' theory that early humans were vicious predators, man-the-mighty-hunter. We embraced it so thoroughly that many still hold the belief despite evidence now pointing to the opposite conclusion, that early humans of the time studied by Dart were running for their lives from bigger meaner creatures now extinct. And when people today did face the reality of early humans as prey not predator, they fixated on the 'caveman' days of hunting as the ideal time, anything earlier (foraging or scavenging) is too early.

Cherry picking bias is why when there is evidence of cannibalism or infanticide or rape or pedophilia. we have a knee-jerk reaction to excuse it away as an exception for some extreme condition, not the early human norm. And this is why it's so hard for even scientists to believe there have been early humans who did not eat meat, even though our biology is herbivore. When evidence of any meat eating was found, the behavior is overgeneralized as done routinely, and by every member of the group, and all groups. Then when evidence of a vegan diet is found, it's a knee jerk reaction to say 'it's safe to assume' this was not the case with everyone, or they had to be eating insects or lizards or something but there was just no evidence left. The bias is revealed in 'fall back' reactions.

It's almost like the closest thing we have to conceive some sort of utopian human lifeway is early human history, so we read our biased ideals into it. But there is benefit to learning from the past to find out what works, to help choose what lifeways to bring into our future. Also, at least for some, it's just interesting to know evolutionary history of humans and others. And to find our biases and debunk them informs us of our cultural lens, who we are today, and how we got here.