prehistoric culture
- noun
- /ˌpriːhɪˈstɔːrɪk ˈkʌltʃər/
:
cultura prehistórica
- Studying the burial rituals of a prehistoric culture helps us understand their beliefs about life and death.
Examples
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The paintings discovered in the cave provide insight into the daily life of a prehistoric culture that existed thousands of years ago.
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For most prehistoric cultures, one has to piece together the evidence for warfare from artifactual bits and pieces.
Academic text (2003) -
How could a prehistoric culture have made designs that are essentially invisible from ground level—and why?
Academic text (2009) -
The caste system has been extinct in the country; the re-emergence of such a miserable state of prehistoric culture is incredible; it is outrageous!
Blog text (17) -
Thirty years ago, archaeologists were certainly aware that violent, organized conflicts occurred in the prehistoric cultures they studied, but they considered these incidents almost irrelevant to our understanding of past events and people.
Academic text (2003) -
Archaeologists found tools that were used by a prehistoric culture before any written records were created.
Synonyms
6
5.6
A period before people wrote things down
How Ancient
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines the adjective 'prehistoric' (before written records) with 'culture' (shared practices of a society) in a straightforward adjective + noun composition, so the meaning 'a society or cultural practices from before written records' is directly derivable from the parts. This composition is common cross-linguistically and follows regular English semantics, so a B1 learner who knows both words should understand it.
Etymology
Prehistoric culture names the way people lived before writing; prehistoric means 'before writing' and culture means the tools, art and habits they left behind. Because we have no books from that time, people study those objects as clues, so the phrase means a group's life 'before written records'.