Atavism

[6] In social sciences, atavism is the tendency of reversion: for example, people in the modern era reverting to the ways of thinking and acting of a former time.

University of London professor Guy Standing has identified three distinct sub-groups of the precariat, one of which he refers to as "atavists", who long for what they see as a lost past.

[30] During the interval between the acceptance of evolution in the mid-1800s and the rise of the modern understanding of genetics in the early 1900s, atavism was used to account for the reappearance in an individual of a trait after several generations of absence—often called a "throw-back".

[citation needed] This had been bred from ancient landraces with selected primitive traits, in an attempt of "reviving" the aurochs, an extinct species of wild cattle.

[citation needed] Both atavism's and Ernst Haeckel's recapitulation theory are related to evolutionary progress, as development towards a greater complexity and a superior ability.

[citation needed] In addition, the concept of atavism as part of an individualistic explanation of the causes of criminal deviance was popularised by the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso in the 1870s.