Urgesellschaft

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Urgesellschaft (meaning "primal society" in German) is a term that, according to Friedrich Engels,^[1] refers to the original coexistence of humans in prehistoric times, before recorded history. Here, a distinction is made between the kind of Homo sapiens as humans, who hardly differed from modern humans biologically (an assertion disputed by anthropology), and other representatives of the genus Homo such as the Homo erectus or the Neanderthal. Engels claimed "that animal family dynamics and human primitive society are incompatible things" because "the primitive humans that developed out of animalism either knew no family at all or at most one that does not occur among animals".^[1] The U.S. anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan and translations of his books also make use of the term.^[2]

In specificity, this long period of time is not directly accessible through historical sources. Nevertheless, in archaeology, the study of material cultures provides a variety of opportunities to gain a better understanding of this period, work that is likewise present in sociobiology and social anthropology, and in religious studies through the analysis of prehistoric mythologies.