Shamanic Ritual and Ancient Circumpolar Migrations

Several recent studies have shed light on the migrations and admixtures that led to the peopling of the Americas. Very little is known, however, about the religious concepts and the ritual life of the Arctic groups that migrated between Asia and America. Shamanic worldviews based on oral transmissio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current anthropology 2021-04, Vol.62 (2), p.239-246
Main Author: Stépanoff, Charles
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Humanities and Social Sciences
Social Anthropology and ethnology
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Summary:Several recent studies have shed light on the migrations and admixtures that led to the peopling of the Americas. Very little is known, however, about the religious concepts and the ritual life of the Arctic groups that migrated between Asia and America. Shamanic worldviews based on oral transmission are often considered timeless, and their ancient history is supposedly impossible to know. This article provides a comparative study of ritual techniques to identify transcontinental connections between Siberian and North American groups. Through an extensive ethnographic comparison, it shows that indigenous peoples of the North share a ritual tradition, the “dark tent,” across 10,000 km around the pole, from Western Siberia to Labrador and the American plains. Drawing on recent genetic data, it hypothesizes that this ritual technique, grounded in an animistic cosmology, expanded from Western Siberia to the east and was introduced into North America by the Paleo-Eskimo approximately 5,000 years ago.
ISSN:0011-3204
1537-5382
DOI:10.1086/713536