Totemism was considered a primitive religion by many European thinkers in the 1800s. It was thought to be related to beliefs about food and incest taboos. In 1869, John Ferguson McLennan said that "there is no race of men that has not come through this primitive stage of speculative belief". Early thinkers had the idea that beliefs in totemism came from indiginous clans being uneducated about the difference between humans and animals. This is not still talked about as true in modern discussions on totemism.