Yeah, it looks like you are now(?) just arguing for arguments sake. Do you really expect adventures to provide a detailed historic justification for the current state found in said adventure? A treatise about the socio-economical circumstances which made a specific tribe of goblins live in the same cave structure as a beholder?
No you don't, because it is not relevant for the adventure which describes the current snapshot in time the adventurers are confronted with. Only now you suddenly want this requirement because you failed to argue that "primitive" is an inherently racist word used to degrade entire societies instead of just describing the state of technological development (or artistic style).
Sorry, I'm still trying to catch up on this thread, and I've been reading the Grippli example for a while and you are really, really missing the point.
It's not that this group of Grippli are described as primitive. After all, that might very well be true, as you say. It's just a snapshot of a particular place and time. That's not the issue.
The issue is that Grippli are ALWAYS described as primitive. And, the Northern European stand ins - in this case Cormyr, are NEVER primitive. Heck, all one has to do is look up and down the Sword Coast description. Every single PHB race is never described as primitive. They build fantastic cities like Waterdeep and Neverwinter. They are ALWAYS the top of the heap. And the swamp dwelling frog men? The humanoids? ALWAYS primitive. Never primitive because of where they live or because of history, but always primitive because of what they are.
I mean, good grief - this is a community that has traded with CANDLEKEEP, the largest repository of knowledge in Faerun, for a long time. The Grippli village is TWO DAYS from Baldur's Gate. It's in the Cloakwood. It's not some isolated area where these people would never come into contact with outsiders. They regularly trade with other people.
This would be like expecting people from Cardiff to be "Primitive". Or, to put it in a North American perspective. People in London, Ontario should be primitive because they're a couple of hundred kilometers from Toronto. Heck, it's not even that far. We're talking about 60, 70 miles from Baldur's Gate.
Reference for distances:
Forgotten Realms (Faerun, Sword Coast) Interactive Map
So, again, explain to me why on earth these people would be even slightly less advanced than anyone else?