troglodyte

Troglodyte is a term with origins in ancient Greek that designated a person who dwells in a cave or hollow. In classical and medieval literature the word was used to describe various peoples thought to live in caves, rock shelters, or inaccessible places, often with geographic and cultural ambiguity. In English, the term broadened to refer generally to anyone living a cave-dwelling or hermitic lifestyle, and by extension to people deemed backward or archaic in comparison to urban societies.

In anthropology and archaeology, troglodyte is sometimes used descriptively to indicate cave-associated living or cave-adjacent cultures. However, the term is increasingly considered archaic or pejorative and is typically replaced by more precise ethnographic or archaeological descriptors. In studies of human evolution, cave sites are important for sites of early human activity; the organisms that live exclusively in caves are described as troglobionts while those that use caves but can live outside are troglophiles.

In biology, the term is also used to describe cave-dwelling organisms across taxa. The genus Troglodytes, for example, includes the Eurasian wren; scientific nomenclature uses Troglodytes as a genus name unrelated to the human cave-dweller sense.

Contemporary usage of troglodyte as a label for a person is often considered dismissive or insulting; the term appears in literature and media as a metaphor for outdated or socially closed attitudes.