This classic work is a history of the ways in which anthropologists have thought about "primitive society". Its study was one of the programs that established anthropology as a science in the second half of the 19th century. It was a specialized effort within a broader discourse that then embraced the study of "primitive" mentality and theoretical conjectures regarding the origin of language and religion. All these issues were closely linked to the great Darwinian question of the origins of man. However, the peculiar, modern version of the idea of "primitive society" is a separate topic.
Western fiction presents deep continuities regarding distant peoples and remote ancestors. The imaginative lawyers who wrote about "primitive society" in the 1860s and 1870s had in mind conflicts that could be traced back two and a half thousand years. The "barbarian" of the ancient Greeks and the "savage" of the Europeans of the Age of Discovery were transformed into the "primitive" of anthropologists. Adam Cooper traces how, through successive transformations, the myth of the "primitive" managed to be adopted by various theoretical schools and serve different ideological currents because "primitive society" is the mirror image of modern, the fantastic reverse of western "Civilization". In its present form, the "primitive" bears the name "indigenous" and "autochthonous", reflecting a romanticized reaction to "Civilization" and "science".
Through fascinating insights into the classic texts of anthropology and with reference to contemporary versions of the myth of "primitive society", which sees it revived in the "indigenous peoples movement", Cooper reveals how mistaken positions can form the basis of academic research and political programs.