I am a fan of Japanese cabinetry, and the way they did not use metal fasteners, and yes, it is important to tip one's hat to the forefathers. Thank goodness, however, for not having to mix explosives and set them off in order to make a picture with something that was the forefather of electronic flash. Or even more recently, when as a child, I used to by flash bulbs by the dozens, changing the bulb after each shot. Now that was a shooting workflow that I would not care to return to.
Your point is well made - but so is mine, namely that progress and technology have made certain things easier and faster to do. I recently built a credenza with 6 shelves on full-extension drawer slides, and a barn door front, using doweled joints with dovetails for the drawers (a nod to the old days), and the only place I used metal fasteners was to attach the drawer slides to the drawers and the carcass, and the barn door hardware. I did use a jointer plane to prepare the edges of the top and sides, which were made by edge-joining multiple pieces of 5/4 ash, and of course numerous hand places for fitting and trimming stuff. And I built my workbench years ago before having any real power tools, using nothing more than an auger for holes, and dovetail saw for joinery, and a jack plane, smoothing plane, and jointer plane to get the top flat and straight. It took me a while but it was well worth the effort. I could build that same workbench today with my power tools in 1/4 the time, with most of the time taken by clamping and gluing.
If you want to talk about primitive tech, there is no better example than the masons of the Inca Empire. They used a system joinery that did not include mortar - just gravity - to hold things together. Their work was so exacting that the joints between stones were so tight that one cannot slip a piece of paper in between two stones.
https://thearchitectstake.com/work-news/mark-english-architects/rock-whisperers-the-subtle-power-of-incan-masonry/I am a fan of Japanese cabinetry, and the way they... (