I'm not sure anything meaningful can be said in response to what you wrote in one short comment. And that's because when I start thinking about happiness these days and happiness in the past, I don't seem to find happiness at all. I do, of course, a retrospective with the lives of the generations before me in my family. All of them had a very difficult life, conditioned by the times they lived in - slavery, wars, communist regime, etc.
All this affects our modern life. It cannot be otherwise. But I think you're right. Our ancestors had other, perhaps lower criteria for achieving happiness. They achieved it and enjoyed it. And we today, modern people, are not capable of that.