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What evidence is there in Evolutionary Psych for Hunter Gatherer models?

Hi all,

I've sat through about five Psych courses in the last year, and I've noticed that whenever the class discusses something that might be influenced by social settings, like gendered colour preferences or personality traits, inevitably someone mentions evolutionary advantage for the thing developing in hunter-gatherer societies.

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I'm a humanities person, so maybe my questions are going to seem stupid, but I don't understand how something like colour preference could appear so quickly in the genes of a species. I thought humans started organizing into hunter-gatherer societies like 40,000-20,000 years ago, is that wrong?

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Plus, I would assume that from the point where those societies arose onward, we would have to attribute a certain amount of psychological traits and changes to cultural influence. I don't understand how or where psychologists (or anthropologists, or historians, or anybody) found evidence for behaviours after hunting or gathering became things that apply globally to every regional group of homo sapiens on the planet outside of, like, cave paintings.

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TBH I'm at a point where I don't even feel like evolutionary psych is legitimate. It seems equivalent to using Freudian psychoanalysis to prescribe anti-depressants. Can someone tell me where, if at all, the evidence comes from that supports evo-psych, or can you direct me to some readings so I can understand why it's so ubiquitously used in psych classrooms?
gpt
Color preference shows up way earlier than hunter gathering as humans.  Turtles have color preferences and it has everything to do with optimal nutrition.  Deep reds and blues are great indicators of nutritional value, and then taste to determine carbohydrate quantity and possible overabundance of alkoloids.  

If you really want to dig in deep, there are two books that you absolutely must read together. The red queen by matt ridley. DO NOT STOP HERE.  Read Sex at Dawn next.  NOW YOU CAN STOP.  Matt ridley falls a bit into the Gouldian trap of proposing that noses evolve to hold up one's glasses.  Sex at dawn overwrites those parts with another explanation that better explains edge cases and cultural aspects.

Remember, always remember, that agriculture is at best 20,000 years old.  That is insufficient time to significantly to push evolution at the population level.  So almost all traits post agricultural revolution are pitted against and working in concert with our foraging roots.  If people can opt to return to foraging, they absolutely do, assuming the environment is conducive to doing so. Maxing out at 4 hours of labor per day, with the rest committed to social interaction, is what crafted us for 4.48 million years.  Moving beyond foraging has only had .02 million years of evolutionary pressure on the human race.