The pinnacle of human thriving that I have ever experienced in my life was life as a tribe, in a village.
Ethnos (ἔθνος in Greek) means a people, nation, or ethnic group — a community bound by shared culture, language, and ancestry.
Key meanings:
- In ancient Greek, ethnos referred to a tribe, nation, or group of people sharing customs.
- In modern usage, it often means an ethnic group or peoplehood.
- In anthropology, it’s used to describe groups formed by shared identity, often in contrast to political or civic definitions of nationhood.
Etymology:
From Greek ethnos, meaning “nation, people, caste, or tribe.”
It’s where we get words like ethnic, ethnicity, and ethnocentric.