"historically rare high-trust"? You are wrong.

Most self-forming human societies are high-trust and more loyal to each other than to truth (as the models have so eloquently regurgitated). Look anywhere from the hunter-gatherer tribes to villages to small towns. I have traveled my small, poor country extensively and the only place the fundamental idea of altruism had to be "consciously invented, built and protected" was in the big cities. In the rest of the places, it came to them as naturally as hunger. We've found skeletons from thousands of years ago that indicate that the whole society came together to care for the disabled individual for nothing in return, leading them to live as long as a modern disabled person with healthcare might.

Societies become low trust driven by specific factors: resource scarcity, something forcing a lot of different groups of people into the same area without integration. This is not a defense of humanity. I'd say the case of the returned wallet is more an example of class-loyalty than general human altruism. Humans have an instinct for exclusion of the non-conforming.

But the idea that civilization has to be invented and maintained is a debunked, regressive, even dangerous idea in that this line of thinking was used to justify a lot of atrocities historically.

Is it fair to say it’s a general human trait to iteratively, over many generations, step towards that society?

For almost all of human history we lived in very small groups with incredibly high trust, which was necessary for survival. Modern low trust societies are the exception and the rarity.

"Hail capitalism because we're only civilized under the influence of game theory!"

I think we're living in a highly individualistic society and what little high trust remains is outside of the logic of markets.

You should have seen the dark age... if everyone fended for themselves there we wouldn't be here now. You know how much you depend on your peers without any of the affordabilities of today's age?!

Note that it's also rapidly failing and Europe is changing fast.

Thats not entirely true. High trust tight knit communities are the default we evolved for. Where is usually breaks down if people don't have a strong internal sense of guilt is in sufficiently large groups (i.e. cities) where the social dynamic breaks down and people get effective anonymity.

References or you are making shit up