ALLVATER. – This is an expression introduced into the specialized language of ethnology and the history of religions by the English explorer A. W. Howitt in his work *The Native Tribes of South-East Australia* (London 1904), intended to encompass the superior beings venerated by those tribes under various names. The same author and in the same sense—limited, that is, to the south-eastern Australians—was also used by the German scholar of religious psychology J. W. Hauer in the volume *Die Religionen. Ihr Werden, ihr Sinn, ihre Wahrheit* (Berlin 1923). The American J. H. Leuba later extended the expression to the supreme beings of all primitive peoples (*A Psychological Study of Religion. Its Origin, Function and Future*, New York 1912). H. Cunow, in turn, in the work *Ursprung der Religion und des Gottesglaubens* (Berlin 1913), referring again to the Australians, altered the term to «Altvater», i.e., «old father», as ancient, venerated, and time-honored.
However, with the progress of studies and research, the term has fallen into disuse, since the related and eminent religious concept of primitive peoples is now customarily designated by expressions that roughly correspond to our «Creator», «Supreme Being» (v.), etc.