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Future Primitive

281 statements
54 feature instances
42 referencing feature instances

Future Primitive	type	FeatureClass
Future Primitive	label	Future Primitive
Future Primitive	page	FuturePrimitive
Future Primitive	comment	Evolution isn't goal-directed. Sometimes the directions it takes, in Real Life and in fiction, can be surprising. Certain species of New World monkeys, for example, re-evolved secondary claws from their fingernails, having lost their true claws earlier in their evolution from more prosimian-like ancestors. Similarly, in fiction, a species (often but not limited to humanity) will sometimes evolve into a more feral, less civilized, sometimes even non-sapient variety, regaining "primitive" characteristics. These "primitive" characteristics can include behaviors and/or physical traits. Whether or not the result of this evolution is still recognizably related to the parent species varies from work to work and species to species. This trope tends to be expressed in a matter of degrees. Most basic is the scenario common to post-apocalyptic settings After the End, where humanity (or another species) is still physiologically more or less the same, but society has collapsed and technological and cultural regression have set in. The people are living a more primitive existence than their more technologically and culturally advanced ancestors. They may even intentionally evoke a "tribal" aesthetic, and may raise a Barbarian Hero or two. The scruffy survivor of a Scavenger World is usually not an example of this trope, but the tribe of abandoned feral children he meets in the wasteland â€” well, they're headed down this path. In more extreme scenarios, the population may have evolved into a new subspecies or another species altogether with more "primitive" or "feral" behavioral and physical characteristics than their more "civilized" ancestors. The change may be subtle (like increased muscle mass, more body hair and a neanderthal-like face) or much, much more radical. Whether these changes in the population constitute a new species or are simply a variation or subspecies of the original depends on the work, but typically most Scavenger World-type future settings are not far enough removed from the Present Day for natural selection to favor such drastic changes. May overlap with Was Once a Man. Sometimes, it's the motivation of an Evilutionary Biologist to try and take control of evolution in order to avert this fate. For more extreme cases, where higher intellect is lost altogether, see Formerly Sapient Species. Common to After the End settings. Likely to exist in Humanity's Wake, and primitives of the ice age sort are likely to turn up in the wake of a Glacial Apocalypse. Contrast Evolutionary Levels, Ultimate Lifeform and The Singularity (all of which tend to assume evolution's a linear, goal driven process). Has nothing to do with the effects of a Devolution Device. The change must be a result of cultural and/or biological evolution; it cannot be the result of a Devolution Device or other similar transformation on an individual or a group. Please note that for an example to fit this trope, it must feature an entire population subjected to evolution (whether that evolution is cultural or also physiological). Isolated persons raised by animals or left to fend for themselves in the wild would not count. Neither would any creatures created by a Mad Scientist by combining human and animal traits (such as in The Island of Doctor Moreau and its various adaptations and homages in science fiction works). A virus with the same effect on individuals as a Devolution Device would not be an example of this trope. This trope applies to populations, not individuals or groups with too small a gene pool for viable reproduction. However, evolution does not have to be portrayed realistically for this trope to apply. "Evolution" can work however the writer wants it to work in his/her 'verse, so long as it's stated to be evolution, and not the result of some other process or event, like a Mad Scientist's experiments, a Devolution Device, or a transformative virus. However, if a gradual change began with experimentation, or a virus, etc., which altered the terms of natural selection, resulting in a dramatically altered evolutionary trajectory, it would count as an example. Also note that in Real Life, as already stated, evolution is not goal directed; the only "value" of a trait in evolutionary terms is how much that trait enhances the fitness of an organism or its offspring. Like this trope, real evolution can involve the loss of traits as well. For example, parasitic leeches often lack many traits in comparison to their free-living cousins, which include other annelid worms like earthworms and beachworms. This is because these traits, unnecessary for the parasitic lifestyle, had no fitness advantage; it's possible they even detracted from a parasite's fitness. This does not mean that parasitic leeches are any more or less "evolved" than non-parasitic annelid worms. In evolutionary science, "primitive" simply means "retaining ancestral traits." And events like Anthropoid monkeys evolving secondary claws from their fingernails are the rare exception, not the rule. Examples
Future Primitive	fetched	2024-04-07T07:46:43Z
Future Primitive	parsed	2024-04-07T07:46:44Z
Future Primitive	processingComment	Dropped link to AllHailTheGreatGodMickey: Not an Item - FEATURE
Future Primitive	processingComment	Dropped link to FishPeople: Not an Item - FEATURE
Future Primitive	processingComment	Dropped link to OurElvesAreDifferent: Not an Item - FEATURE
Future Primitive	processingComment	Dropped link to TheReveal: Not an Item - FEATURE
Future Primitive	isPartOf	DBTropes
Future Primitive / int_1099a6ac	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_1099a6ac	comment	Fight Club: Discussed in Tyler's vision for things to come:
Future Primitive / int_1099a6ac	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_1099a6ac	featureConfidence	1.0
Fight Club	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_1099a6ac
Future Primitive / int_112decbc	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_112decbc	comment	Planet of the Apes: The original novel features primitive, mute humans on a planet dominated by a civilization of intelligent apes.
Future Primitive / int_112decbc	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_112decbc	featureConfidence	1.0
Planet of the Apes (Franchise)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_112decbc
Future Primitive / int_1f67dad6	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_1f67dad6	comment	The Time Machine: The morlocks (ape-like violent savages) and eloi (docile, indolent and meek) are the Trope Codifier, if not the Ur-Example as well. The Time Traveler theorizes that morlocks are the descendants of the working class, who over millennia of servitude and life tending to underground machinery have evolved into pale troglodytes who still keep the machines going out of instinct and habit, while the eloi are the descendants of the upper class, having been tuned into dull-minded and child-like organisms by millennia of indolence and lifestyles that required neither strength nor intelligence. An interesting result of this arrangement is that the workers ended up being the ones in control, with the brutish and bestial morlocks farming the otherwise helpless eloi like cattle. A brief visit even farther into the future (omitted in some editions of the text and restored in others) sees humans evolved into gray rabbit-like animals, preyed on by giant insects.
Future Primitive / int_1f67dad6	featureApplicability	1.0
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The Time Machine	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_1f67dad6
Future Primitive / int_1f72b18d	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_1f72b18d	comment	Tom and Jerry: Exaggerated in "Guided Mouse-Ille". Tom, living in a futuristic facility, prepares an incredibly potent explosive to deal with Jerry. The explosive is apparently so strong that when it goes off and the smoke clears, Tom and Jerry are both cavemen living in a prehistoric jungle.
Future Primitive / int_1f72b18d	featureApplicability	1.0
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TomAndJerry	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_1f72b18d
Future Primitive / int_291daa72	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_291daa72	comment	Riddley Walker: 2000 years after a nuclear war, life in Great Britain resembles the Iron Age, with people scavenging the ruins for metals to make their tools.
Future Primitive / int_291daa72	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_291daa72	featureConfidence	1.0
Riddley Walker	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_291daa72
Future Primitive / int_2f46f0b2	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_2f46f0b2	comment	Sharing the Night: The dragons are noted to be something rather like this. While the details of life in the ancient dragon empires are somewhat vague, they are known to have had formal rulers, a complex multi-species society, an interest in aesthetics, and the ability to craft powerful magical artifacts. This civilization died alongside the ancient world, and the modern Smaug-like loners who live in caves and hoard piles of gems are essentially barbaric savages with no trace of their ancestors' culture.
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Sharing the Night (Fanfic)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_2f46f0b2
Future Primitive / int_30b4f7fa	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_30b4f7fa	comment	All Tomorrows: the Qu genetically engineer humans into a variety of non-sapient, animalistic forms and scatter them across the galaxy. Over time, many of them manage to re-evolve sapience.
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Future Primitive / int_30b4f7fa	featureConfidence	1.0
All Tomorrows	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_30b4f7fa
Future Primitive / int_30fa563b	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_30fa563b	comment	Yor: The Hunter from the Future: A plot twist halfway through reveals that it is not set in the distant past, but a post-apocalyptic future. At least it would be a twist if the title of the movie didn't explicitly state it was set in the future. In the cases of both Yor and the above Teenage Caveman, however, the plot twist doesn't explain why there are dinosaurs running around in what is supposed to be the future.
Future Primitive / int_30fa563b	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_30fa563b	featureConfidence	1.0
Yor: The Hunter from the Future	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_30fa563b
Future Primitive / int_3ae518ad	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_3ae518ad	comment	Idiocracy: After 500 years of mind-numbing media and natural selection favoring large numbers of poor-quality offspring over smaller numbers of higher quality offspring, humanity has become rather stupid, and struggles on with only two things in mind: loads and loads of sex and cheap entertainment.
Future Primitive / int_3ae518ad	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_3ae518ad	featureConfidence	1.0
Idiocracy	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_3ae518ad
Future Primitive / int_3de53cbc	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_3de53cbc	comment	Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus: A scientist reveals to the main characters that this is the most likely future of humanity. Earth is not recovering from the ecological disaster as the public believes. Human efforts are failing, and eventually civilization will collapse and a new ice age will start. While some humans will survive, there will no longer be a chance for them to develop beyond the Stone Age, as all easily accessible resources are gone.
Future Primitive / int_3de53cbc	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_3de53cbc	featureConfidence	1.0
Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_3de53cbc
Future Primitive / int_405243c7	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_405243c7	comment	The 100: The Ark and Mount Weather have maintained much of the technology and civilization from before the nuclear apocalypse, but the Grounders have reverted back to a tribal, hunter/gatherer society.
Future Primitive / int_405243c7	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_405243c7	featureConfidence	1.0
The 100	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_405243c7
Future Primitive / int_4897a8aa	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_4897a8aa	comment	Taerel Setting: In the Age of Shattering, the zu'aan tribes are the kin'toni clans are brought back to the stone age to iron ages. The cities don't fare much better, being ancient era at the most tech wise.
Future Primitive / int_4897a8aa	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_4897a8aa	featureConfidence	1.0
Taerel Setting (Website)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_4897a8aa
Future Primitive / int_4e31571e	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_4e31571e	comment	GalÃ¡pagos describes descendants of the human survivors of a global epidemic, stranded on the titular islands, evolving into a non-sapient, semi-aquatic, furred, seal-like species, due entirely to natural selection.
Future Primitive / int_4e31571e	featureApplicability	1.0
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GalÃ¡pagos	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_4e31571e
Future Primitive / int_54027ef1	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_54027ef1	comment	Land of the Lost (1974): The Sleestaks are the savage descendants of Enik's people, the Altrusians. At first, Enik refused to believe this, and thought he had traveled into his people's past. When he saw the ruined Lost City, he realized he had been wrong, and that he was actually in the future relative to his own timeline. Sleestaks and Altrusians look similar but with a few key differences such as height (Altrusians are shorter), skin color (Altrusians are brown, Sleestaks are green), and the presence (in Altrusians) or lack (in Sleestaks) of a third opposing digit. Altrusians are also more intelligent and able to function in daylight, whereas Sleestak are nocturnal and require low-light conditions. In one episode where Will is thrown into a pit by the Sleestak, he meets an intelligent member of their race who tells him that on occasion throwbacks to their days as the civilized Altrusians are born and are usually ostracized.
Future Primitive / int_54027ef1	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_54027ef1	featureConfidence	1.0
Land of the Lost (1974)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_54027ef1
Future Primitive / int_54c55400	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_54c55400	comment	Hothouse: In a distant future, Earth will become tidally locked with the Sun, resulting in eternal day on one side and eternal night on the other. Human civilization will collapse, and survivors will mutate into a number of species. The story tells about a group of humans who are small, green-skinned, and live on tree branches on the day side. It's basically a Death World with not even a semblance of civilization.
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Hothouse	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_54c55400
Future Primitive / int_580a8972	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_580a8972	comment	Diaspora: Among the various Transhuman and post-human factions in the far-future setting, the Dream Apes Invoked this trope by using genetic engineering to remove their capacity for conscious thought.
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Future Primitive / int_580a8972	featureConfidence	1.0
Diaspora	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_580a8972
Future Primitive / int_6c1d09b2	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_6c1d09b2	comment	Fallout 2: You start out in a tribe founded by the first game's protagonist. They have all the tropes associated with primitive tribes (spears, loincloths, face-paint), but they live in the post-apocalyptic future. "Tribals" have become a mainstay of the franchise, usually characterized by mistrust of advanced technology and an inherent tendency to respond to random things with religious reverence. These traits even seem to apply to "domesticated" tribals like Benny, who actually acts a lot more urbane and sophisticated than many other characters.
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Future Primitive / int_6c1d09b2	featureConfidence	1.0
Fallout 2 (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_6c1d09b2
Future Primitive / int_70136d02	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_70136d02	comment	Teenage Caveman: Both the 1958 and 2002 versions feature a post-apocalyptic world where the descendants of human survivors have regressed to primitive tribalism. The '58 version is an almost direct adaptation of By the Waters of Babylon, below.
Future Primitive / int_70136d02	featureApplicability	1.0
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Teenage Caveman	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_70136d02
Future Primitive / int_737c641b	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_737c641b	comment	In Terre en fuite, the Decoy Protagonist learns that human civilization is destined to be destroyed by an unspecified cataclysm (likely an ice age), although we will have visited Mars and Venus by that point. Only small primitive enclaves will survive in the equatorial regions. After the ice ages (yes, plural) end, humanity will resettle Earth (or Hellera as they will call it) and will even evolve better brains. However, this trope will be true for many hundreds of thousands of years before that happens.
Future Primitive / int_737c641b	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_737c641b	featureConfidence	1.0
Terre en fuite	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_737c641b
Future Primitive / int_7545887f	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_7545887f	comment	Wayward Pines has an unspecified global disaster (or war, or both) cause the fall of civilization, followed by the mutation of the survivors into feral primitives called Abbies (from "abnormals"). The only one to have foreseen the collapse of civilization (but not the mutation into Abbies) was a scientist named David Pilcher, who built an Elaborate Underground Base in a mountain in Idaho, got a bunch of volunteers and kidnapped a bunch more people and froze them all to be woken up in 2000 years (except for one man who woke up periodically to maintain the systems). Pilcher was shocked to find Abbies where he expected only nature and Ruins of the Modern Age. He and his people wiped out an Abby group and built a town surrounded by large electrified walls next to the mountain.
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Wayward Pines	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_7545887f
Future Primitive / int_76dc8764	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_76dc8764	comment	The Tribe: Child and teenage survivors of an adult-killing virus wear facepaint and form social units called "tribes", intentionally invoking this trope (despite the series taking place only 20 Minutes into the Future).
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Future Primitive / int_76dc8764	featureConfidence	1.0
The Tribe	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_76dc8764
Future Primitive / int_7988cb68	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_7988cb68	comment	Mass Effect: The krogan are portrayed as once being a more civilized race. After turning their homeworld into a nuclear wasteland, only the toughest and most psychotic krogan survived. In fact, krogan able to go into the now infamous "blood rage" were once only a small part of the population — and they were medicated for it!
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Mass Effect (Franchise)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_7988cb68
Future Primitive / int_81692f99	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_81692f99	comment	Star Trek: Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Spock's Brain", the Enterprise visits a planet where an ancient catastrophe split society in two: the female Eymorg, a technologically advanced, automated subterranean civilization; and the male Morg, who live a Stone Age existence on the frozen surface. Thousands of years in an Underground City where all their needs are catered for has reduced the intelligence of the Eymorg till they have little more than childlike intelligence. However they still abduct the Morg (unlike The Morlocks Trope Namer) for sexual reproduction and slaves. Star Trek: Voyager: Tom Paris's "accelerated evolution" into a non-sapient salamander-like creature in "Threshold", where a working Transwarp Drive is built on a shuttlecraft. The writer stated that his idea was that, in the distant future, humanity would evolve beyond the need for sapience due to technology providing for all our material needs.
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Star Trek (Franchise)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_81692f99
Future Primitive / int_8fda7950	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_8fda7950	comment	Known Space: The Thrintun ("Slavers") seem to be this trope to the extreme, as their only living descendants are the Grogs: sessile creatures whose limbs degenerate into useless stumps when they reach adulthood, and which weren't even recognized as sentient when first discovered. Then we find out the Thrint "Power" became so developed that the rest of their bodies atrophied. They're sessile because you don't need to move when you can glance at a prey-animal and tell it "get in my mouth".
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Known Space	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_8fda7950
Future Primitive / int_98c55b59	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_98c55b59	comment	Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura: Ogres are speculated to be the descendants of a race of giants who lived in ancient times, but have since become extinct. Ogres are a good deal smaller than their ancestors (the average ogre is about 2m tall, the length of a giant's thighbone), and while giants were civilised and intelligent enough to use magic, ogres are savage and feral.
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Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_98c55b59
Future Primitive / int_9a7088bc	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_9a7088bc	comment	Star Trek: The Original Series: In "Spock's Brain", the Enterprise visits a planet where an ancient catastrophe split society in two: the female Eymorg, a technologically advanced, automated subterranean civilization; and the male Morg, who live a Stone Age existence on the frozen surface. Thousands of years in an Underground City where all their needs are catered for has reduced the intelligence of the Eymorg till they have little more than childlike intelligence. However they still abduct the Morg (unlike The Morlocks Trope Namer) for sexual reproduction and slaves.
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Star Trek: The Original Series	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_9a7088bc
Future Primitive / int_9d25491c	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_9d25491c	comment	Pandorum: The man-eating Hunters are presumed to have evolved from people who caught space madness and turned into cannibals. Their evolution into feral predators was "accelerated" by artificial means, as the crew were meant to settle on another planet and given an enzyme that would help them adapt to it. In this case, they adapted to the conditions existing on the spaceship they were trapped on.
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Pandorum	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_9d25491c
Future Primitive / int_9d34190a	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_9d34190a	comment	The Elder Scrolls: The Falmer were originally the graceful Snow Elves with a culture rivaling the Altmer (High Elves), but after facing near-extinction at the hands of the Nords, the Falmer turned to their estranged Dwemer kin for aid. The Dwemer agreed to take in the surviving Falmer, but only if they blinded themselves with poisonous mushrooms. For centuries the Dwemer used the Falmer as servants and slaves, and may have performed experiments on them that caused them to further mutate into their present form. When the Dwemer abruptly vanished from Nirn, the Falmer were left behind as a race of blind, subterranean, Morlock-like beasts with a primitive, xenophobic tribal culture. So significant was the de-evolution of the Falmer that it affected their very souls, turning them from "black" sapient souls into the "white" souls of creatures. The Dreugh, a race of aquatic humanoid octopi, once ruled the world in a previous kalpa, or cycle of time. However, that was one of the 12 worlds which were destroyed and the remnants pieced together to create Nirn. The Dreugh of early Nirn were still intelligent, but that diminished over time as their civilization fell and their intelligence devolved. Now, like the Falmer, their de-evolution from an intelligent, sapient race with their own civilization has included their souls becoming white, like those of animals.
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The Elder Scrolls (Franchise)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_9d34190a
Future Primitive / int_a183d57f	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_a183d57f	comment	Futurama: Parodied in "The Cryonic Woman", when Fry and his recently-unfrozen 20th Century girlfriend go back into cryogenic stasis to try to find a time they can both be happy, only to emerge from their pods in a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by violent primitives. Except they're not in the far future, their pods just got dumped in L.A. In "The Late Phillip J. Fry", The Time Machine is parodied when it is shown that in the year 5,000,000 AD human evolution has diverged into two species. A unnamed race of small pink and purple creatures "advanced in intellect and morality", and the "Dumbloks", "stupid vicious brutes who live underground". The montage song "In the Year 252525" displays some less extreme examples such as medieval-looking knights riding ostriches.
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Futurama	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_a183d57f
Future Primitive / int_a2a386c9	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_a2a386c9	comment	Orion's Arm: This happens several times: It's fairly common for baseline reserves — isolated planets reserved for baseline humans, which are a fairly endangered species in the far future — to have their technological and cultural levels kept strictly at a Neolthic to medieval level. The Epimethian Movement was a group who voluntarily removed their higher cognitive abilities to revert back to simian intelligence. Abdication happens when a post-singularity entity descends to a lower singularity level for various reasons.
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Orion's Arm (Website)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_a2a386c9
Future Primitive / int_a3f4bb95	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_a3f4bb95	comment	By the Waters of Babylon, a 1937 short story by Stephen Vincent Benet, is likely the Trope Maker for the "postapocalyptic future all along" twist ending version of this trope. In the story, a young man of the primitive Hill People tribe travels to the forbidden "Place of the Gods", violating his tribal taboos. The Place turns out to be a bombed-out New York City, and he realizes that the gods were actually human beings who were overwhelmed by their own power, raising the question of whether his own pushing at boundaries is such a good idea. The protagonist John decides that once he's the priest of his tribe "We must build again" though.
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By the Waters of Babylon	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_a3f4bb95
Future Primitive / int_a79d670	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_a79d670	comment	In Cthulhu Armageddon by C.T. Phipps the human race has degenerated into frontier towns and tribes. The Great Old Ones destroyed most of the human race in the Rising but a handful of humanity has carried on with scavenged technology or living like hunter gatherers. The fact that magic has returned to the world helps.
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Future Primitive / int_b5da3933	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_b5da3933	comment	Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future: Invoked, as far-future biologists re-stock Earth's denuded ecosystems with engineered humanoids of animal-like intelligence. Some of them re-evolve sapience, but in most cases remain limited to primitive hunter-gather lifestyle.
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Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_b5da3933
Future Primitive / int_b6f4562d	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_b6f4562d	comment	Kamandi, a comic book adaptation of Planet of the Apes with the Serial Numbers Filed Off: instead of just apes, all sorts of animals have become more advanced, while humans act like savage animals.
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Kamandi (Comic Book)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_b6f4562d
Future Primitive / int_bcadd7cb	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_bcadd7cb	comment	Applies to some planets in Warhammer 40,000, known as feral worlds. These planets are generally under very little control by the Imperium of Man, who at most might recruit (or more accurately, kidnap) some of the people for use in the army. The Imperium as a whole is this. As advanced as some of their equipment may seem, technologically and especially culturally, they're a pale shadow of humanity's achievements in the Dark Age of Technology. An AI from the Dark Age that was accidentally awakened by Imperial tech priests spent most of its time in the story expressing its complete disgust with how primitive its captors were compared to humanity it knew.
Future Primitive / int_bcadd7cb	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_bcadd7cb	featureConfidence	1.0
Warhammer 40,000 (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_bcadd7cb
Future Primitive / int_c0c57462	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c0c57462	comment	Chrono Trigger features a Downplayed version. After the End, the remnants of humanity huddle in filthy shelters, hiding from the killer robots and mutants that roam the ruined cities. Very little food remains, and the survivors, dressed in tattered rags and with wildly unkempt hair, are largely reliant upon Autodocs to keep them alive, though this does nothing about their gnawing hunger.
Future Primitive / int_c0c57462	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c0c57462	featureConfidence	1.0
Chrono Trigger (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c0c57462
Future Primitive / int_c0d0d316	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c0d0d316	comment	Red Dwarf: According to the official rule book, in the universes where the rabbits evolve and become a civilisation, humans (instead of becoming extinct as in the other universes) become ignorant savages, being mainly used as medical experiments and slaves.
Future Primitive / int_c0d0d316	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c0d0d316	featureConfidence	1.0
Red Dwarf (Tabletop Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c0d0d316
Future Primitive / int_c43df4d8	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c43df4d8	comment	Doctor Who: One of the Fourth Doctor's companions is Leela, a savage from a hunter-gatherer culture left over from a collapsed human space colony in "The Face of Evil". Her arc was meant to be a Pygmalion Plot, made more complicated by the fact that the Doctor is the worst possible person to teach her etiquette. In "The Curse of Fenric", Haemovores are vampiric, feral creatures that might be the evolutionary result of humanity living in a world taken over by the demonic Fenric. In "Gridlock", the Macra have "devolved" (in the Doctor's words) since their first appearance in (classic) season 4 from powerful, mind-controlling creatures to beasts who are living only to feed. More justified than most examples, since the second appearance is BILLIONS of years later; these creatures could have evolved from a few random cells a Macra tourist unknowingly left behind in that time. The Futurekind from "Utopia" are a savage, cannibalistic race from the end of the Universe. It is hinted that they are the early stages of humanity turning into the Weevils from Torchwood. The monstrous "Dregs" from "Orphan 55" are the descendants of humans who were abandoned on Earth when the planet became uninhabitable due to environmental disasters and a nuclear war. They evolved into questionably sentient carnivores capable of photosynthesizing to create oxygen from the high-CO2 atmosphere, although they still need to eat meat.
Future Primitive / int_c43df4d8	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c43df4d8	featureConfidence	1.0
Doctor Who	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c43df4d8
Future Primitive / int_c565e657	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c565e657	comment	The first part of A Canticle for Leibowitz shows a postapocalyptic Utah that greatly resembles Dark Ages Europe, with all the superstition and fear that implies. As the story goes on through a number of time skips, it gets increasingly less primitive, resembling the High Middle Ages and then, finally, the actual future again... before World War IV bombs us all back to the Stone Age again.
Future Primitive / int_c565e657	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c565e657	featureConfidence	1.0
A Canticle for Leibowitz	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c565e657
Future Primitive / int_c6f7e804	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c6f7e804	comment	Blake's 7: In "Terminal", Servalan claims that the savage, ape-like Links, products of "accelerated evolution" on the artificial planet Terminal, are humanity's future. Presumably their name derives from the phrase "missing link". Many other episodes feature primitive descendants of old Earth colonial expeditions; a few of them are genuinely Human Aliens, though, and would not count as this trope, and there were a few other ambiguous cases, having descended to barbarism after war or sociological collapse.
Future Primitive / int_c6f7e804	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c6f7e804	featureConfidence	1.0
Blake's 7	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c6f7e804
Future Primitive / int_c74f2d3c	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_c74f2d3c	comment	Diablo: Humans are the descendants of an ancient race known as the Nephalem, who are described as a half-breed race born from forbidden unions between angels and demons, with no fixed destiny and limitless potential that even the mightiest Demon Lords and Archangels felt threatened by. The angels and demons who sired them became so afraid of them that they modified an artefact called the Worldstone into a Power Limiter, causing the second generation on Nephalem to be born considerably weaker and with much shorter lifespans than the first. At the end of Diablo II, the Worldstone is corrupted and shattered, and 20 years later, a small number of humans were starting to regain their Nephalem-like potential. Unfortunately, thanks to the actions of a renegade sect of angels, the vast majority of humanity was wiped out, severely slowing the restoration of humanity's ancestral potential. As of Diablo IV, fifty years afterwards, there have been no new cases of humans awakening Nephalem powers yet seen, forcing what remains of human society into the most primitive and diminished state it had been in thousands of years.
Future Primitive / int_c74f2d3c	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_c74f2d3c	featureConfidence	1.0
Diablo (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_c74f2d3c
Future Primitive / int_cac235cc	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_cac235cc	comment	See takes place several hundred years after a plague reduced Earth's population to just two million people and left the survivors completely blind. Without their sense of sight, humans can no longer build or operate advanced technology, and the world has settled into an Iron Age level of development.
Future Primitive / int_cac235cc	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_cac235cc	featureConfidence	1.0
See	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_cac235cc
Future Primitive / int_cfc60ccd	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_cfc60ccd	comment	It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). The crew theorizes that the monster could be part of the remnant of a Martian civilization that somehow destroyed itself and returned to prehistoric barbarism.
Future Primitive / int_cfc60ccd	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_cfc60ccd	featureConfidence	1.0
It! The Terror from Beyond Space	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_cfc60ccd
Future Primitive / int_d5505073	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_d5505073	comment	Uplift: In the second trilogy, intelligent beings (the descendants of starfarers who are trespassing in the galactic equivalent of a "nature reserve", including some humans) are trying to revert to a non-sapient state: if the law enforcement of the Five Galaxies don't discover them until their culture has collapsed, they won't be "purged" for their ancestors' crime.
Future Primitive / int_d5505073	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_d5505073	featureConfidence	1.0
Uplift	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_d5505073
Future Primitive / int_d9919dda	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_d9919dda	comment	Last and First Men sees this happen a few times: After the fall of the First World State, a combination of the sheer devastation of the collapse of civilization and the indolence induced by millennia of decadence cause mankind to regress to a barbaric existence, spending millennia afterwards as struggling, tribal farmers, petty warlords and roving bands of raiders and brigands, before the eventual rise of the Patagonian civilization. The seventh men of Venus were designed with wings by the preceding sixth men, and did not care about technology. However, the "wingless mutants" who evolved into the eighth men did, and over time formed their own civilization and completely displaced the seventh men. The tenth through fourteenth men were all examples of sentience briefly re-emerging from the ecosystem of animals that evolved from the ninth men on Neptune. The fifteenth men manage to restore civilization to humanity though. Further, there was a variety of animalistic subhumans that developed from the various human races during and after the various collapses of civilization. Besides the Neptunian varieties, there were also the baboon-like subhumans that evolved from the first men (our own species) after the collapse of their last civilization and the predatory seal-like humans of Venus, who often competed with the sixth men.
Future Primitive / int_d9919dda	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_d9919dda	featureConfidence	1.0
Last and First Men	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_d9919dda
Future Primitive / int_dfff0805	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_dfff0805	comment	Orphans of the Sky: By the time the novel takes place, the Crew has become so backward that they think the ship is the whole Universe, and live in what is essentially a feudal society consisting primarily of subsistence farmers ruled by a priestly caste of "Scientists", a nobility descended from the officers, and a king-like Captain. Even the concept of discrete time units has been lost, without days or seasons with which to divide timekeeping. The only reason that the ship still works is that its reactornote the secondary reactor, actually, the main one having gone kaput during the mutiny can convert any matter into energy at pretty much 100% efficiency. Everything that is no longer useful, including the dead, is used as fuel for the reactor. The Muties of the upper decks have regressed even farther, and now live as a loose scattering of raiders, squatters, and scavengers.
Future Primitive / int_dfff0805	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_dfff0805	featureConfidence	1.0
Orphans of the Sky	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_dfff0805
Future Primitive / int_e235270c	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_e235270c	comment	Stellaris features a few pre-generated planetary systems whose inhabitants fell victim to this trope. In one, a civilization was able to colonize its moon, only for a dispute between the homeworld and colony to go nuclear and drop both societies into barbarism — by the time you find them, the two groups have diverged enough that the species look entirely different. In another, a species was able to achieve an advanced civilization with the help of bonded brain slugs, only to suddenly reject the slugs and fall back into non-sapience, leaving the brain slugs to await the day another species accepted their offer.
Future Primitive / int_e235270c	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_e235270c	featureConfidence	1.0
Stellaris (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_e235270c
Future Primitive / int_e48556c2	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_e48556c2	comment	Ryu: Nuclear war laid waste to the world, and the Doma IV supercomputer meant to salvage civilization decided that it'd be for the best to let the remaining humans grow absolutely ignorant so that it'd never happen again. All remaining knowledge was left with the family of Doma's creator, which ruled over a tyrannical medieval kingdom for three centuries. By the time Ryuji manages to fulfill his role as a savior and becomes the new king, two of the most thriving cities aside from Doma have been destroyed and little technological resources remain in Japan.
Future Primitive / int_e48556c2	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_e48556c2	featureConfidence	1.0
Ryu (Manga)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_e48556c2
Future Primitive / int_e80fa454	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_e80fa454	comment	Battleborn: Phoebe's DLC Story Operation reveals this to be the apparent case for the Tempestian Grayhorns of which the Thralls are derived from. Apparently the Thralls are actually the ancient Aztanti at least on a genetic level. Based on some findings by Beatrix and the others over the course of the operation, it's uncovered that the once great Aztanti purposely de-evolved themselves into feral beasts. In the ancient past, the Aztanti were able to open a portal connecting to the Varelsi's universe. Although they were able to shut close the portal, they decided on a drastic course of action in hopes of preventing another open portal to the Void. They figured that even if they erased all records of how they opened a portal to another universe, their people would still be around to accidentally make the same mistake again in the future. So using a bespoke retrovirus tailored to rewrite segments of their genetic code, the Aztanti de-evolved themselves into feral beasts no different than mere animals. These beasts however retained dormant Aztanti traits that had the potential for greater strength, intelligence, and lifespans. In force evolving the Thralls into their current state, Beatrix simply reawakened these dormant traits but just enough to make them into a Slave Race for the Jennerit.
Future Primitive / int_e80fa454	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_e80fa454	featureConfidence	1.0
Battleborn (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_e80fa454
Future Primitive / int_ee66462b	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_ee66462b	comment	Dr. STONE: After waking up from being being petrified for 3700 years, Senku encounters a village of 40 people living in stone age condition. They have access to craftsmanship, beer brewing, fishing, and dog domestication, but see any science like flame testing and static electricity as sorcery. They are the descendants of astronauts that escaped the petrification of Earth by being on the International Space Station, before landing on an island, near Japan and starting a new human society.
Future Primitive / int_ee66462b	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_ee66462b	featureConfidence	1.0
Dr. STONE (Manga)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_ee66462b
Future Primitive / int_ef076a36	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_ef076a36	comment	Star Trek: Voyager: Tom Paris's "accelerated evolution" into a non-sapient salamander-like creature in "Threshold", where a working Transwarp Drive is built on a shuttlecraft. The writer stated that his idea was that, in the distant future, humanity would evolve beyond the need for sapience due to technology providing for all our material needs.
Future Primitive / int_ef076a36	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_ef076a36	featureConfidence	1.0
Star Trek: Voyager	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_ef076a36
Future Primitive / int_f186f924	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_f186f924	comment	The post-apocalyptic setting of Horizon Zero Dawn is this, where humans have regressed back into tribes with primitive technology, such as spears and bows. Learning what happened to the Precursors (the humans of 2060 AD) is one of the big mysteries of the game — that and why there are all kinds of cybernetic animals running around.
Future Primitive / int_f186f924	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_f186f924	featureConfidence	1.0
Horizon Zero Dawn (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_f186f924
Future Primitive / int_f42ccd4f	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_f42ccd4f	comment	In Rimworld, lack of Faster-Than-Light Travel means tech levels can vary wildly from star system to star system. In the eponymous rimworlds, this frequently means devolution to early industrial, or even nomadic tribal, societies picking through the remains of the space-faring ancestors who colonized the world centuries or millenia ago.
Future Primitive / int_f42ccd4f	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_f42ccd4f	featureConfidence	1.0
RimWorld (Video Game)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_f42ccd4f
Future Primitive / int_fcc3907	type	Future Primitive
Future Primitive / int_fcc3907	comment	Nobledark Imperium: Many Exodites shun the advanced technology of the Eldar in order to lead deliberately stone-age lives. Illic Nightspear left Alaitoc over a thousand years ago to become an Exodite and developed a profound fascination with the hunt, particularly the very low-tech kind done on his adopted planet, wears animal skins and ash and hunts using a simple stone spear, bow, and flint arrows. He would be considered a joke, if it weren't for the fact that he can reliably navigate the webway and that the hunting trophies that he adorns himself with include body parts taken from genestealers, squiggoths, and a necron.
Future Primitive / int_fcc3907	featureApplicability	1.0
Future Primitive / int_fcc3907	featureConfidence	1.0
Nobledark Imperium (Fanfic)	hasFeature	Future Primitive / int_fcc3907

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Future Primitive	processingCategory2	Apocalyptic Index
Future Primitive	processingCategory2	Speculative Fiction Tropes
Future Primitive	processingCategory2	We Will Not Use an Index in the Future
The Tragedy of Man (Animation) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Blue Gender / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Justice League: Generation Lost (Comic Book) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Adventures of Ook and Gluk: Kung-Fu Cavemen from the Future (Comic Book) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Nobledark Imperium (Fanfic) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Sharing the Night (Fanfic) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Fight Club / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
It! The Terror from Beyond Space / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Colony (2021) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Yor: The Hunter from the Future / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
By the Waters of Babylon / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
City of No End / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Harsh Tales / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Hothouse / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Last and First Men / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Manifold: Space / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Orphans of the Sky / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Pump Six and Other Stories / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Red Mars Trilogy / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Return of the Living / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Riddley Walker / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Peripheral / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Stormlight Archive / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
See / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Peripheral (2022) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Tribe / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Numenera (Tabletop Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Red Dwarf (Tabletop Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
The Strange (Tabletop Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
13th Age (Tabletop Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
After the End: A Post-Apocalyptic America (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Caves of Qud (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Hollow Knight (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
New California (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Pigsaw (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Revival Recolonization (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
RimWorld (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (Video Game) / int_5c36f1df	type	Future Primitive

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