How can it be about money?

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How can the quest for money be a universal human when for most of human evolutionary history
store-able wealth did not exist?

I would argue that storeable wealth has been around for a long time. Before we had money, you had land, precious metals, livestock, etc.

Before that, it would be who controlled access to desirable natural resources.

I think the idea of money came about to enable greater control over resources and populations. It replaced the underlying natural measure of who gets what, which is muscle power. Since humanity co-operated to attain survival there seems to have been this constant struggle for power within groups and between groups. Money is another way for scores to be kept, and for manipulation of others.

So rather than it all being about money, it is still all about our struggles for power and survival. I think during hardship or catastrophe, the base instincts of using ones muscle power come into force again. During revolutions the rich are defeated quickly by the masses who utilize their muscle power.

the agrarian revolution was in exactly 10,000 B.C.E the species started in 52,013 B.C.E. on April 7th I think.
so for 4/5th of Homo sapiens no real way to have wealth. If you think other Homos are human then even less time with money.

as for a struggle control of resources this apparently mostly happened at the group level (no private property til agriculture )

Because it's always been about RESOURCES.

It's just that, today, money is the key to access resources. Most of the time. Goods, property-- all these things are, basically, currency. Skills are the exception to the rule...

...but larceny or scavenging are the only skills that will feed you if you can't find a legitimate channel to exchange your skill for goods, property, and/or money.

It's always been about POWER (at the minimum, the power to meet your own needs) and CONTROL (at the minimum, the power to control your own situation). That's OK. It gets evil (or at least into the realm of personality disorders) when people demand to have the power to control others.

Because humanity has embraced something called Consumerism as an overwhelmingly dominant ideology.
From the time a child is born it is taught at the conscious and subconscious levels to understand and embrace it.
When someone tries to step out of that consumerist society and reject the ideology, they find themselves without the one thing that they must have to survive and that is money. (money means more than just cash, it means anything that can be traded for something of value)

I don't really think it's in our genes, other than what was said above about control of resources, and how money acts as a proxy for those resources. Rather it is inescapably in our memeplex.

The root of money is the desire for things. Money is a medium of exchange which makes it easier to acquire things.

The desire for things has been around as long a humans have.

It comes down to a fundamental of needing to eat.

Having more stored up means having security from changing times.

A researcher showed how empires arranged on a East-West access went farther than those on a North-South axis because being at the same general latitude means most everything you are used to transfers easily to a new location. Changing latitude means doing different things from where you came, and not everything is transferable.

Money is just an extension of our need to have goods stored up for the future. One who can storehouse food (and controls the means of production) is the rich man when famine comes to the land.

How can it be about television?

Television has only been around for a very short part of human existence (shorter than money), yet most people see the need to have one.

How can it be about computers?

Computers has only been around for a very short part of human existence (shorter than money and television), yet most people see the need to have one.

Money's just another one of those things. Humans have always had a desire for things since they've been around. Money, televisions and computers are examples of things that humans desire.