In older anthropology texts and discussions, the term "primitive culture" refers to a society believed to lack cultural, technological, or economic sophistication or development. For instance, a culture that lacks a written language might be considered less culturally sophisticated than cultures with writing systems; or a hunter-gatherer society might be considered less developed than an industrial capitalist society. While becoming less politically correct, some Western authors, such as anthropologists and historians, used it to describe pre-industrial indigenous cultures. Historically, assigning "primitive" to other people has been used to justify conquering them.