cultural epoch theory
the theory, formerly influential but now largely discredited, that all human cultures pass through the same stages of social and economic organization in the same order. In most versions of the theory, this involves progress from a hunting-based society through pastoral, agricultural, and early industrial epochs to the modern developed world, with each stage being seen as more complex, organized, and secular than previous stages. See modernization; primitive; recapitulation theory; social Darwinism.