Happiness is something that's very hard to prove, but there does seem to be a couple of things that are crucial for human happiness. Having adequate nutrition, being free from illness, having shelter, being part of a loving community, feeling safe, having clean air and water... Wild people have all this and more.
This site has plenty on "Evolutionary Fitness" - how we function best as hunter gatherers:
http://aris.ss.uci.edu/econ/personnel/devany/evolutionaryfitness.html
It's particularly interesting that these sites are not written by primitivists. They are written by atheletes, nutritionalists and others. While their focus is to try to adapt the hunter gatherer lifestyle to modern living (a task I think impossible and inappropriate) this doesn't mean their research isn't instructive. What seems apparent is that many, many people in different spheres are coming to the conclusion that we are ill-designed for civilised life and function better as hunter gatherers.
"The Semai never strike their children, nor strike each other. When they speak in Malay, they translate the verb 'to hit' as 'to kill'. If two people quarrel, the worst they may do is call each other 'cockroach'. The quarrel goes no further, but is taken to a third party for resolution. The Semai believe that to make another person unhappy is to increase the probability that the other will suffer an accident. This is something they to avoid under all circumstances. These characteristics have led many Westerners to call the Semai 'timid' or 'weak'." ...
"They "emphatically deny" that they teach their children, but insist "our children just learn by themselves." If a parent tells a child to do something and the child responds, "I bood (don't feel like doing it)", the subject is closed. To put pressure on the child is strictly forbidden. Children learn most activities through imitative play that in time becomes adult behaviour."
from "The Semai: A Nonviolent People of Malaya" by Robert Knox, Dentan, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NY, 1979. Qouted in "A Language Older Than Words" by Derrick Jensen
How much we give up when we become domesticated. How much we have to gain by re-wilding ourselves.
More details in the FAQ on primitivism
These questions were asked about a future primitivist world, but the answers are based on how present primitive people live:
1. Who will own things and will private ownership of the means of production be allowed?
Primitive people don't own things. Material possessions are viewed as more of a hindrence than a help. Ownership fosters greed, selfishness and pride - qualities that are detrimental to individuals and the tribe as a whole.
2. How will goods be exchanged in the world? And who will control these transactions?
Sharing, sharing, sharing. The woman gives her milk to her young, the man makes arrows for his friend, the child collects wood for the fire. The transactions are uncontrolled, freely given. When people act like this it helps the cohesiveness of the social group as a whole and fosters a mutual aid environment completely alien to us civilised folk.
3. What will be the dominant form of association: will it be individual relationship, the family, tribe, clan, commune, nation or what?
The first 'parent', the essential nurturer is the forest. Children are breastfed by many women and children do not have an obsessive relationship with one pair of adults (their biological parents). Rather they view the whole tribe as their parents. Before all this though is a genuine sense of themselves as healthy, happy individuals, who never forget that without the forest and their tribe they would be nothing.
4. Who or what will mediate between individuals and groups? Will it be force, laws, judges, elders, authorities, governments or what?
No archies, no governments, no man-made laws. Very little mediation is neccessary as the conditions do not exist for crime, mental illness, random violence, drug/alcohol dependance (dependance, not usage). Again I don't know 'what will' happen - this is what does happen in primitive hunter-gatherer societies. Maybe we can learn from it?
5. What moral laws (if any) will exist between people?
Morality is a funny concept. Who decides what's 'moral'? Who decides they're in a position of authority to make that distinction?
I let my conscience decide what is the right thing to do for me. Only personal conscience can have any weight in our interactions with others. Anything else, any imposed morality, easily collapses under any strain. Better to look for something solid.
Children mimic what they see around them. They don't need to be told a lot of things because they observe and copy what's going on anyway. In primitive societies they learn fast what is acceptable and what isn't based on observation, not laws laid down by certain groups. It seems to work better than our civilised prisons, courts and electric chairs.
6. Who will be the keeper of the laws? If one group of people do something wrong what will happen to them?
What laws? Who decides what's lawful? Who enforces them? If an alien came down and looked only at our laws it'd probably think we'd a pretty good set-up here. Our laws look great on paper, but the reality is quite different.
Wild people respect the laws of nature - the laws that matter - whereas human-made laws are capricious and flawed. If our culture wasn't so pathologically anthropocentric we would accept that. And accept our place in the web of life as free, wild beings. Civilised laws and codes have no place in the real order of the universe - no human law can ever approach the harmony and complexity of, for instance, the magnetic dance of the moon and tides. And before civilisation no human would ever want to try.