does any one know any indigenous peoples with technology levels?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. "Indigenous" means originating somewhere and still being there. Homo sapiens originated in Africa, so the only indigenous people on Earth have to be some subset of the ethnic groups in Africa who still live in more or less the same place they started, without migrating halfway around the continent. Africans didn't develop much of a technology, at least not an "indigenous" one. They kept being invaded and conquered by the tribes that migrated to Eurasia, changed color, and came back with Bronze Age and later Iron Age tools and weapons. They were never allowed to grow naturally out of the Late Stone Age, the "Neolithic Era." Agriculture, permanent farming and fishing villages, animal husbandry. Basket weaving. Clay pottery. Natural fibers, grass and wool. That was the extent of their technology. No metallurgy, just stone tools and flint blades, with wood handles.

There was one brief ascendence to civilization in central Africa about 1,000 years ago, a kingdom called Zimbabwe. (The modern country of that name stole the name, it's in a different place.) Its cities didn't survive long and its ruins are really ruined so it's hard to tell how advanced their technology was. If they had metal tools, it would still be hard to know whether they had invented metallurgy or simply traded elephant hides to the Arabs for their metal tools.

So maybe you mean aboriginal people. "Aboriginal" means the first people who lived in a place, even if they didn't originate there. That would fit your teacher's inclusion of the aboriginal Australians. They arrived there about 40,000 BCE and there were no people there yet, so they are the first people to inhabit Australia. But they are not "indigenous" because they came over in boats from somewhere else. Probably southeast Asia, but I'm no anthropologist.

Now I'm really confused as to what he means by "technology," because the Australians were still in the Stone Age when the European explorers arrived. I think it was the Middle Stone Age ("Mesolithic Era") because nobody's ever mentioned the Aborigines doing any farming. But I could be wrong. In that case, the highest level of technology they could have achieved would be the same as Africa, but with no sign of any domesticated animals. Reeds and flint; thatched huts. Possibly pottery. You're already studying the Aborigines so you can answer these questions better than I can.

So I assume your teacher meant to say "aboriginal," not "indigenous." These days lots of people don't know the correct meaning of words, not even teachers.

There are several places where the people who live there now are the same people who lived there as far back as archeologists and anthropologists can trace history. For example, the Chinese are the "aboriginal" people of China. As far as I know, there's no evidence of any Homo sapiens living in China before the Mongoloid tribe arrived there that eventually developed into the Chinese. I'm not sure how long they've been there but it has to be at least 20,000 BCE because I know that by then they already had invented boats and were exploring the whole Pacific coast of Asia. The Chinese satisfy the true rigorous scientific definition of "aboriginal," and they also fit the colloquial definition of "indigenous," so they qualify for your study either way. They developed a pretty impressive technology, staying more or less even with the Sumerian/Babylonian/Mesopotamian culture as it spread throughout western Asia and into Europe. Agriculture, animal husbandry, then copper, gold, silver, bronze, finally steel. The wheel. Clay pottery, then porcelain and enamel. Woodwork, carpentry, cement. Cultivated fine plant fibers, linen, cotton, perhaps hemp, and wool fibers from domesticated mammals, silk fibers from domesticated arthropods. Written language, printing, full-rigged sailing ships, gunpowder, optics, plumbing, roads.

I just don't know if your teacher understands that by whatever definition that he used to label the Australians as "indigenous," he has to accept the Chinese in that category too. Teachers are notorious despots in the classroom and they can call you wrong just because they feel like it, especially if the only alternative is to admit that they're wrong. So I don't know if he's going to be happy if you walk in and say your second "indigenous" people are the Chinese.

Which leads us to the next aboriginal group, the Mongoloid people who migrated out of central Asia, up into Siberia, then across the Bering land bridge during the Ice Age when sea level was 300 feet lower, into North America. They were the first humans of any species in the Western Hemisphere, the first wave arriving about 14,000 BCE. There is some evidence that they might actually have come over in boats during warmer weather, six thousand years earlier, but in either case they are the aboriginal people of most of the Americas.

That first wave is called the Athabascan people. They were the ancestors of most of the people in the eastern USA and Canada and everybody south of the Rio Grande, including the two native civilizations of the New World. The Olmec/Maya/Aztec in Mexico and Central America, and the Inca and their earlier antecedents in South America.

Here, again by your teacher's definition, you have some "indigenous" people, and they went much farther with the development of technology than the Africans or Australians. They had reached the Bronze Age by the time the Europeans invaded and occupied their lands and destroyed their culture. Metal tools and weapons, gold and silver, writing (in the north), draft animals (in the south), big cities whose ruins are still there to climb on.

The second wave came over from Central Asia through Siberia several thousand years later, somewhere between 8,000 BCE and 4,000 BCE. They are called the Na-Dene people. The New World was already full of people so they didn't migrate very far south or east. Most of them stayed West of the Rocky Mountains and north of what is now the Mexican border. They never achieved the level of technology of the earlier immigrants. Strictly Late Stone Age. They had some agriculture, but the largest domesticated animal in North America was the turkey. Basket weaving, laced leather clothing, pottery. All that beautiful silver jewelry and those colorful rugs that everyone thinks of as "Indian culture" were actually the result of cultural contamination by the Europeans. The Indians had no mines from which to get metal ore for silver, and no cotton or sheep from which to get fine fibers for weaving rugs.

The last wave arrived around 2,000 BCE. They are the Eskimo-Aleuts, who had already adapted to Arctic conditions in northern Siberia, and they stayed at those same latitudes in our hemisphere. But they were very successful and spread all the way to Greenland. Strictly Mesolithic technology. Hunting marine mammals with spears and little boats. Flint tools for carving bone and ice. No agriculture in the permafrost. They never domesticated the caribou, unlike their cousins in the other hemisphere who did domesticate the caribou's close relatives, the reindeer. But they brought domesticated dogs with them from Asia to pull their sleds.

You ask about Latvia. The Latvians are a Balto-Slavic people, one of the Indo-European tribes that arrived in Europe around 2,000 BCE. There were already people in Europe, we have plenty of archeological evidence of them, but not enough to know who they were and whether they were closely related to anyone else. Therefore, by any definition, the Balts, Slavs, Celts, Teutons, Romans, Greeks, and Albanians -- the various branches of the Indo-European tribe who settled in Europe -- are not "indigenous" or "aboriginal." There are only two ancient ethnic groups in Europe who might be. One is the Basques in the Pyrenees of France and Spain. Their language has no known relatives and they were there long before the Celtic tribes settled in Iberia and southern France and got conquered by the Romans who turned them into the Portuguese, Spanish, Catalonian, and Provencal people.

The other is the family that consists of the Finns, Estonians, and Saami (the people we used to call Lapplanders). They were probably the first humans to occupy those regions, so they qualify as aboriginal. The Saami are the ones who domesticated the reindeer, but notwithstanding that unique accomplishment in animal husbandry, they were a nomadic people and nomads don't develop any technology that can't be carried on a long walking journey. I don't know enough about the Finns and Estonians; their civilization has been so contaminated by contact first with the Norsemen of Scandinavia and then with the Slavs of Russia, that it may be hard to figure out what technology they developed and what they borrowed. If you want to study them there's probably a lot to be learned that isn't well known to most people outside the region. They are of the Finno-Ugric-Ural-Altaic ethnic group, related to the more recently arrived Huns, Turks, and Magyars, and to many tribes who stayed behind in the area where Europe meets Asia.

Other possibly "aboriginal" people might be the Polynesians, especially the ones who colonized the distant islands of New Zealand and Hawaii. The people of eastern New Guinea, about whom I can tell you nothing except that as late as World War II they were still living in the Stone Age. The Malay and the Indonesian peoples, who are closely related to the Polynesians and speak related languages. I don't know what kind of native technology you'll find on those islands, except to be positive that they never developed metallurgy. The gamelan, that lovely metal chime that characterizes the music of the area, was invented after they had contact with traders from India, China, Thailand or one of the other Iron Age civilizations on the continent.

That should be plenty for you to work with, if you can figure out what your teacher means. Like most of the people here I'm usually reluctant to give anybody a lot of help with their homework, but in this case you've got a really tough assignment. Perhaps you can have some fun with it and get a good grade at the same time. Even with my tiny bit of help you've got a lot of work to do.

Good luck!

 

Inuit technology

Granted, but for the most part it's technology that they brought with them. Their cousins who stayed behind in Siberia had already mastered the art of surviving in an arctic climate. The Inuit developed one new technology: the combination of hunting and fishing techniques into the seafaring hunt for whales. (If I'm calling it correctly. I don't believe their Siberian cousins were doing that.) They didn't even domesticate their sled dogs. Recent DNA testing reveals that all dogs are descended from the first domesticated wolves in eastern China, rather than having been repeated independently in separate locations.

And all of these technologies were textbook examples of the Mesolithic Era. None of the agriculture, animal husbandry, and the resulting adoption of a non-nomadic lifestyle that defines the Neolithic. The Thule people finally established villages without either planting or herding. An amazing feat but it's still only early Neolithic. They never even got around to taming the caribou, the reindeer of the Western Hemisphere.