Primitive Horde

Charles Darwin and evolutionist sociologists of the nineteenth century used a term of Tartar origin, "primitive horde," to refer to the simplest possible form of social formation in existence during prehistoric times. The horde was a link between the state of nature, ultimately unknowable, and the state of culture. The word has also been used by some ethnologists to characterize groups that engage in hunting and gathering in a given territory. The notion of the primitive horde was described in Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871)....