Animals can create paths when they move in a herd. You'll notice that deer don't create paths through the forest.

https://images.pexels.com/photos/16160627/pexels-photo-16160...

A human tribe could create paths like that, moving all together. But if they encountered "bandits", the result wouldn't be a robbery; it would be a massacre. And that wouldn't likely happen anyway, because there'd be no reason for anyone to be waiting by the path.

(As you noted, animals can create their own paths. Those animals have predators. Which predators lurk by paths waiting for prey to come by?)

If you have one guy moving along an established path, it must mean that (a) a lot of people independently have reason to follow that path at different times, and (b) that guy in particular has reason to be at both ends of the path.

There are two reasons you might see a path appear because of human traffic:

1. The geography imposes a very strict bottleneck, like a mountain pass.

2. Commerce.

It's pretty much always commerce. Commerce can tell you why someone is moving between two fixed locations, and why hundreds or thousands of other people are taking the same route at different times. (Because the endpoints never move, and the people are always either at one endpoint or traveling between them.) And commerce can also tell you why bandits find it worth their while to hang out next to the path.

O peddler, peddler, what's in thy pack? Come speedily and tell to me

I've several suits of the gay green cloth, and silken bowstrings two or three

If you've several suits of the gay green cloth, and silken bowstrings two or three

Then, by my body, says Little John, one half your pack shall belong to me