Who were "The Primitives"?

Supernatural divinities are the primitives’ answer for why the sun goes down at night.
[Brother Cavil (Lay Down Your Burdens, Part 2)]

Now, don’t get me wrong, we can deduce roughly what Cavil was talking about: "lowers" with less knowledge and/or intelligence who lacked a scientific background.

But it’s an oddly specific turn of phrase.

Do we have any idea whether Cavil had some particular group in mind when he said this? Humans? Ancient humans? Something else?

Or was it just what, at least to me, merely constitutes awkwardly over-poetic scriptwriting?