This essay examines two underexplored forms of primitivism: a sapiential primitivism, which locates truth at the beginning in the form of a primordial wisdom or revelation rather than a "state of nature", and an existential primitivism, which portrays so-called «primitive peoples» as bearers of distinctive ways of being, knowing, and relating to nature and the sacred. The paper argues that these two strands eventually converged, transforming “primitives” into witnesses – whether degenerated or intact – of a superior, ancient order of existence. This synthesis found significant resonance within strands of radical right-wing antimodernism, and later migrated, in altered forms, into parts of the New Left, the counterculture, and more recent discussions of indigenous knowledge. The essay maps several stages of this trajectory, highlighting the cross-ideological circulation of primitivist motifs and their persistent role in critiques of modernity.