The irony is that the whole alpha thing in wolves is itself a myth.

It's not a myth, it's just that wolves live in families The "alpha male" is what we people call "father", and has some authority over other wolves by the virtue of being older and more experienced, and their ancestor.

I read a great takedown of the whole "alpha" thing a while back, but can't remember where. Its message was that "alphas" are kind of losers, when all is said and done.

I looked into the whole Alpha thing when I was training my husky and found it’s actually an outdated model/idea

One thing I remember from my degree in cultural anthropology is that there's not much you can generalize about hunter gatherer societies. At least some of them were quite egalitarian.