Abstract
THE RELIGION OF THE PRIMITIVE HUNTER.-In the Sociological Review for April, Mr. Christopher Dawson, in a communication on “Religion and Primitive Culture,” argues that the remarkable resemblances in the “hunting cultures” of North America and Siberia, Australia and South Africa, to the culture of palaeolithic Europe are too great to be fortuitous. They have a common religious foundation, a common attitude to life which may be called the “religion of the hunter.” The fact that totemism extends from West Africa to North America, and was one of the constituent elements in predynastic culture in Egypt, is fatal to the claim of Australia to be the home and centre of diffusion of totemism as held by some writers, and makes it difficult to believe with Prof. Elliot Smith and his school that it was diffused by the historic Egyptians of the'' Archaic Civilisation.'' Judging by the North American evidence, it seems clear that the religion of the hunter-the belief in animal guardian spirits-lies at the root of the whole development. First came the guardian spirit of the Shaman; then of the individual, and as population increased and the group became more complex, the same idea became the principle of the social organisa tion, on one side of the secret society with a common guardian spirit, on the other of the totemic clan, a group of kinsmen inheriting a common guardian spirit.
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Research Items. Nature 115, 958–960 (1925). https://doi.org/10.1038/115958a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/115958a0