Other dangers in the Ancient's time

[MikkoAkure]

That said, a tiny bit of devil's advocate: it's entirely possible that the Ancient world had war, but doesn't anymore for whatever reason; that'd explain why they'd have a word for something like 'mercenary' even if they don't really exist anymore.

Yeah I feel like they did have war at one point because it's insinuated that all of the world is under unified rule in Amaurot, and that one Ancient we can talk to in ShB treats Amaurot as the highest place of society in the world. While war could be LOOOOOONG ago in their history, I don't think the Amaurotines debated the other cities into submission.

The Ancients weren't morally superior to the sundered. We meet haughty ancients, altruistic ancients, dutiful ancients, and psychotic ancients. They're just as human as we are for better or worse, but granted insane amounts of power that is constrained by their societal norms. Unless they popped up on Etheirys with the fully formed society they had at the Final Days, they had to evolve from somewhere.

Two major causes of strife are limited resources and differences in thought and appearance. The culture we found had by this time remedied both and covered individuality in a literal cloak of sameness. At least to me, it would imply this was not always the case and they have either since overcome trials that caused them to take these measures, or they have foreseen the consequences of not adopting such measures which would mean they're not as perfect as they think they are.