Primitive culture
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In older anthropology texts and discussions, a primitive culture is one that lacks major signs of economic development or modernity. For instance, it might lack a written language or advanced technology and have a limited and isolated population. The term was used by Western writers to describe foreign cultures contacted by European colonists and explorers. It is also the title of a major work by Edward Tylor, "the founder of anthropology", in which he defines religion as "animism" which, in turn, he defines by reference to contemporary indigenous and other religious data as "the belief in spirits".
Many sociologists and other writers portrayed primitive cultures as noble—noble savages—and believed that their lack of technology and less integrated economies made them ideal examples of the correct human lifestyle. Among these thinkers were Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who is most frequently associated with the idea of the noble savage based on his Discourse on Inequality, and Karl Polanyi, who in The Great Transformation praised the economic organization of primitive societies as less destructive than the market economy. The belief that primitive cultures are ideal is often described as primitivism; branches of this theory include primitive communism and anarcho-primitivism.
Many of these writers assumed that contemporary indigenous peoples or their cultures were comparable to the earliest humans or their cultures. Some people still make this assumption.
Though belief in the "noble savage" has not disappeared, describing a culture as primitive is often considered factually incorrect and offensive today. Use of the term, especially in academic settings, has thus diminished.
See also
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