Answer:

The Rig Vedic times were turbulent. Absolutely no doubt about it. Turbulent and often times violent.

There were battles, for wealth/cattle, for domination of religious and social practices, for “fertile-lands”, for OFFSPRING and most important of all – Water. For each early civilization, birth-child of rivers, CONTROL over the waters was paramount.

And there were WARS – two major wars, equivalent to those mentioned in the epics, given the time and conditions in which they occurred. The first one was the war between the Panchala King Divodasa and the Dasa King Sambara and the other “Dasaranjana War” or the War of Ten Kings. An internecine war between the allies of King Sudas, a descendant of Divodasa and his ENEMIES – an alliance of 10 Kings from other ARYA tribes. A war that perhaps drained the Panchalas completely and shifted the power center to the Kurus. Just as the Mahabharata war sapped and sounded the death knell of the powerful Kauravas-Pandavas and in more recent times, WW II causing the sun to set over the British empire.