Poverty didn’t evolve, wealth and money evolved.
Poverty is merely a relative assessment of one’s ability to consume.
Hence why indigenous peoples commit suicide in droves once aware of their relative condition.
That relative condition is poverty.
However, it can only be known to be poverty once one is aware of a relative condition.
Prosperity (wealth) evolved from the division of labor.
Money of some kind (commodities) is necessary to remove frictions to the coincidence of wants in a division of labor.
Prices are necessary to allow planning, complex production of multi-part products and services, credit, and debt.
Non-Commodity Money is necessary to reduce frictions to the coincidence of wants, that limits the expansion of trade.
****Our only asset is time. We are not wealthier than cavemen. We have simply made all goods, services, and information cheaper, through the division of knowledge and labor using the information system we call money and prices. This is the most important lesson of economics. All understanding of wealth exists in this one paragraph.****