Nomads to settlers

Wouldn7t it be faster to look at primated? We already been here and done that. First come not families, but tribes. Look at schimpanzee (okay, you may look a bonobo as well. But not at that aspect!), they don't have any lasting relationships. They flock together because there are lots of predators in woods.

Next, we have women playing a "daughter role", changing model of parent-child to man-woman so they would be protected by men more often. That makes only paedophiles to survive. At the same time, they supress the effect of female hormones on sexual excitement and use male hormones instead (getting a combination of the two where cyclic one would be much less noticeable without research) to hide their ovulation so men would protect them from other men (rape is just the other word for adultery and theft) and mate with them all the time. This creates families, They don't start from families to tribes, it's the other way round.

Next we have incest to change relation between siblings to modified version of male-female relationship that was a modification of parent-child relationship. Norm here would be a "man is parent", but in sibling relationship the norm would be "older sibling is the parent", after two mixing up we have so many "motherly women" as one of ideals of beauty.
Next we get homosexuality mixing up with hierarchy instincts and sibling relationship to give birth to friendship.

Friendship creates the instinct of gratitude, whch comes from Latin word "grata" and means "will to grant something in return". And gratitude in its raw form is not cheap moral that uses words in vain; It makes people to give to their benefactors goods they themselves make. Such instinct creates trade.

Wanna know what goes next?

Red Tube? LOL..............and don't forget the sparkles.

I think the point of settling down and moving away from their nomadic lifestyle comes with the boundary between when they move beyond sustenance and discover consistent sources of food. For example, foraging is one. They discover seasonally that fruits and veggies grow and are bountiful when they pass by some hunting route they may have taken and eventually acclimate to the sites where they forage. They've already discovered shelter from nature during their nomadic lifestyle because they either have to find natural shelters such as caves, or they make their own makeshift shelters such as teepees or some tentlike structure from the furs and whatnot. Eventually when they move past basic sustenance, they are able to devote more time towards other things. And thus you would have sort of discoveries of other sources of foods and how those foods come about. Farming would likely rise then. They would mostly first settle by rivers or streams, just sources of water. They'd make their portable shelters using more sturdy materials. They'd adjust to the local climate and seasonal shifts. There would likely still be hunting but much less emphasis on large game. Fishing would probably pick up soon enough. Plus being close to the water would attract other animals which they could hunt. Eventually full blown agriculture would bloom with increased knowledge. The increased knowledge would come by from having moved past basic sustenance.

As far as social structure, obviously full blown chaos cannot work. They likely have left over from their nomadic days a reverence for the strongest males and strongest hunters. They'd likely be at the top of the social order at first. But I think over time, as they adapt to thinking more, they might start valuing intelligence more and look to the elders. The elders would likely try to contain and mitigate social order through various means, and one of which would likely be stories of the past. So you can see how easily myths may arise and religion. I'm sure there are more subtleties like the whole patriarchy thing morsealworth is going on about. Think patriarchy would be a byproduct of the male dominance during nomadic times where strength was highly valued.

You seem to know a lot about this. I get the feeling from what I read that there is no clear path that leads from primitive primates to early settlements. So perhaps there are several paths that coexist and overlap eachother. If you were to make a bulletpoint list of every possible step that would/might take place in chronological order, what would that look like?

The measurement of time would be an interesting step to add. Certain nomads often never thought of the future as much as the now and couldn't actually grasp the concept of taking the future into account. They would meander from one place to the next as dictated by the seasons. It's actually still a problem for doctors; When someone from a nomadic tribe requires extended treatment (for example a cream that needs to be applied twice a day for a week), a nomad will just apply the whole treatment in one go (surely you just apply a week's worth of cream at once, no?) as s/he can't figure out why you would do it any other way. So trying to map the concept of time would be interesting, I think.