That would be a stronger point if D&D --any edition-- was meant to be a realistic combat (and world!) simulator.The origin of the skills is not really important to the point. The point is that if fighting bare handed really is as effective as fighting with weapons, then Heironeous and Hextor have taught their followers and inherently inferior form of warfare.
Even the so-called more simulationist editions aren't proper combat simulators, they're heavily gamist affairs designed to place interesting mechanical options in the hands of people playing martial PCs, hence the number of kooky, effective combat builds that have nothing to do with creating the sense realism, verisimilitude, or whatever.
D&D has always prioritized emulation ("How can I play my favorite fictional archetypes & do cool things?") over simulation, hasn't it?
You can vary the degree of simulation present in an individual campaign. But trying to extrapolate a world from mechanics that were never, by design, never meant to be "physics" is going to end in tears -- or a least in an arbitrary mishmash that's no more logical, coherent, or real-y than the game's starting point.
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