Savagery

Savagery

Apache Indians

once fierce fighting tribe of American West. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 123]

bandersnatch

imaginary wild animal of great ferocity. [Br. Lit.: “Jabberwocky” in Through the Looking-Glass]

berserkers

ancient Norse warriors; assumed attributes of bears in battle. [Norse Myth.: Leach, 137]

Comanche Indians

warlike tribe of American West. [Am. Hist.: NCE, 607]

Crommyonian sow

ravager of the Corinthian countryside. [Gk. Myth.: Benét, 237]

Erymanthian boar

ravaged Arcadian countryside until capture by Hercules. [Gk. Myth.: Jobes, 523]

Huns

Mongolian invaders of western Europe until 453. [Eur. Hist.: Espy, 167]

Magua

a renegade Huron who scalps white men. [Am. Lit.: The Pathfinder, Magill I, 715–717]

mares of Diomedes

lived on human flesh; their capture was Hercules’ eighth labor. [Gk. and Rom. Myth.: Hall, 149]

Taras Bulba

savage yet strangely devoted Cossack leader. [Russ. Lit.: Tarns Bulba, Walsh Modern, 77]

Tartars

13th-century rapacious hordes of Genghis Khan. [Medieval Hist.: Brewer Dictionary, 1064]

tiger

aims at annihilating mankind. [Animal Symbolism: Mercatante, 55]

Vandals

5th-century sackers of Rome and its art. [Ital. Hist.: Espy, 168]

---

Savagery 

(1) A term used in European science to designate the first stage of man’s history, followed by barbarism, and then by civilization. The term “savagery” was first used in this meaning by the British philosopher A. Ferguson (1767). L. H. Morgan used the term to designate the first period in his periodization of primitive society, beginning with the initial appearance of man and concluding with the origin of pottery-making. Morgan’s periodization was reproduced by F. Engels in his work The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. However, as Engels foresaw, with the accumulation of new data from ethnology and archaeology, Morgan’s scheme became partially obsolete. In the periodization accepted by present-day ethnology, the period of savagery corresponds to the time of the emergence of man and the early tribal system (Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods in terms of archaeological periodization).

(2) In ordinary usage, an extreme degree of uncouthness.