This is a myopic and western centered view, true of a subset of western civilization, largely due to authoritarian rule (e.g. you can't hunt the King's game, even if you're starving).
Meat consumption is how a vast amount of indigenous cultures survived.
It’s not western centered. As countries like China and India have grown more affluent, their consumption of pork and beef have also risen. While hunting (and especially social hunting of large game) was important in pre-agricultural societies, it didn’t nearly approach the amount of meat in modern human diets.
I’d recommend the book “Should we eat meat?” by Vaclav Smil for a very thorough dive into this topic.
Meat consumption is how a vast amount of indigenous cultures survived.