[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Referring the people as Stone Age today, does not make sense. They live in the same age as the rest of the world.

Primitive is much more applicable, but it does have connotations that the primitives are lesser than the non-primitives. Thus less-developed, the same term used for not-as-advanced economies rather than third world, could be used.

Before you go along deriding this, how many here would get offended if they were referred to as primitive or their culture as Stone Age? You'd just ignore it, you type? Bull feathers.

If it isn't so difficult to use an accurate and polite term rather than one your fellow man finds offensive, then use the polite term. Simple.

[ichabod1]

If it isn't so difficult to use an accurate and polite term rather than one your fellow man finds offensive, then use the polite term. Simple.

See the problem there is that the fact that you use a different word doesn't change anybody's opinion, so the new word becomes loaded with subtext and it has to be changed again.

[BJClinton]

You'd just ignore it, you type?

No, I would debunk it. The society I live in does not primarily use stone implements. It is, imperically, inaccurate.

[reformedliberal]

I will bet that at the heart of this is not any idea of being insulting, but rather, the progressive fear that anyone so designated will immediately be the target for modernization. The environmentally aware desire not only that no one be modernized, they also want everyone to be forcibly regressed back to pre-industrialized eras.

Whenever I watch various History Channel programs on ancient cultures, the emphasis is on the "surprisingly sophisticated technology" (sic) of Pharonic Egypt or Mayan culture.There is a constant message of the superiority of those cultures who used the brute force of thousands of tribute laborers and some levers and fulcrums rather than anything more technologically advanced.

[ApplegateRanch]

After reading your post, I have decided that we must live in The Preachy Age.

The terms are technologic descriptors of individual cultures, not time-block descriptors.

NEVER have any of the "Ages" referred to a specific time period, but are relative terms for the highest level of technology mastered in the construction of daily tools and weapons by the culture involved.

Thus, Stone age areas coexisted in time with Chalcolithic and Bronze areas, etc.

[SauronOfMordor]

Before you go along deriding this, how many here would get offended if they were referred to as primitive or their culture as Stone Age? You'd just ignore it, you type?

We would ignore it, because we would not regard it as applying to us, even to the slightest degree, and would regard the speaker as stupid for even suggesting it might.

Much like how the average Chinese person would look upon anybody saying that Chinese people were lazy and stupid

The closer an offending phrase comes to the truth, the more it offends