I want to add that the Iriquoian people are probably one of the best examples of all these things. They only have one surviving culture, the Haudenosaunee Nation, but when white people arrived in North America they were a significant cultural group in the areas settled by the early French and English colonists. When we arrived they had long been using a combination of farming, hunting, and managed gathering for sustainence, in a way that was compared to nobility. They had a complex society and political system which they frequently debated. Their political debates with Europeans heavily impacted modern European values, and their political system was extremely influential on the structure early American Republic.
The book The Dawn of Everything goes more into this and other cultures and peoples often seen as primitive for their lithic tools and other traits we typically see as of an earlier stage of advancement.
I want to add that the Iriquoian people are probably one of the best examples of all these things. They only have one surviving culture, the Haudenosaunee Nation, but when white people arrived in North America they were a significant cultural group in the areas settled by the early French and English colonists. When we arrived they had long been using a combination of farming, hunting, and managed gathering for sustainence, in a way that was compared to nobility. They had a complex society and political system which they frequently debated. Their political debates with Europeans heavily impacted modern European values, and their political system was extremely influential on the structure early American Republic.
The book The Dawn of Everything goes more into this and other cultures and peoples often seen as primitive for their lithic tools and other traits we typically see as of an earlier stage of advancement.