Cultural Survivals

Cultural survivals is an anthropological term for cultural ideas and phenomena that survive from an older period of a culture despite the culture undergoing dramatic changes in other areas during this time.

History
The term was first used by Edward Burnett Tylor in 1871. Tylor used it to describe customs that he believed were anachronistic and out of place with the current state of culture, such as superstitions and religious practices that had developed much earlier.

While Tylor believed that these practices no longer had any use and were not integrated with the rest of culture, later anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski rejected the idea that these no longer had a function, but instead that while the beliefs may have remained their function had changed.