The second part is that when you are trying to argue, “some” does not go as a valid argument. You need to come with the specific names, places, descriptions of habits and preferably demonstration of how exactly these examples impacted the prevailing modern cultures. Of course, there was no (still is not) a complete uniformity among the world’s cultures but you have to demonstrate your point beyond the vague statements.
Meh, your point was a cherrypick of society so I don't feel like I need to be particularly exhaustive in my explanations.
I don't think most of them were less problematic than today, but you only need things to start out better and keep the same trend towards improvement to get a better modern day.
Greece was less homophobic than most antiquity societies for example. Just building up on that instead of going back on it would lead to quicker acceptance of homosexuality.
The Iroquois had much better rules about how to treat women than western societies of the time. This article seem to suggest it could even have participated in the conception of feminist thought, though I don't know how believable that is: https://feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/iroquoisinfluence.html
A lot of multicultural empires had a much different conception of race. In fact, a lot of our racism is built on nationalism, which is fairly young. Of course colonial history also play a role. But my point is that we got worse on that track record rather than steady or better, for a time.
So yeah, I believe there's a bunch of historical material to build a better world, as long as you accept it won't instantly be better than the modern day, just build up to it.