Unexpected token ‘.’ when trying to run ‘npm install’

Had this issue on Win 10, npm 8.1.2, node 16.14.2, nvm 1.1.17 and 1.1.19.
Downgrading to node 16.13.2 fixed the problem as per this answer: https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/4234#issuecomment-1025421643