When a group of people adopts a prohibition against theft amongst themselves, and a mandate to defend the group's property from outside pilfering, they are able to build capital.

As their capital builds, they become more powerful than individuals and groups lacking these understandings. Eventually, these capital-accumulating groups find it easier to exterminate outside pilferers than to defend their property from them.

Those groups that survive all feature this prohibition, which soon becomes the customary way of behaving. Since most humans are greatly swayed by arguments from authority, those groups who reinforce this prohibition with a "thou shalt not steal" meme, attributed to God, have less recidivism, and eventually become dominant.