This sample Animism Research Paper is published for educational and informational purposes only. Free research papers are not written by our writers, they are contributed by users, so we are not responsible for the content of this free sample paper. If you want to buy a high quality research paper on history topics at affordable price please use custom research paper writing services.
Humans have long performed rituals for driving out, consulting, or appeasing the invisible spirits that they believe influence their own well-being and interact with the natural world of animals, plants, and objects. The concept today is known as animism, and its influences remain in modern language, habits, and ideas.
Animism is the name modern anthropologists gave to a very old set of ideas about how human beings and the natural world interact. The key concept is that animate and sometimes inanimate objects have a spiritual dimension that influences human well-being. The inhabitants of this invisible world of spirits behave much like ourselves, and interact with one another and with the visible world constantly. The spirits sometimes helped and sometimes defeated human purposes and hopes. Consequently, humans needed to maintain good relations with them, learn their wishes, and appease their anger whenever possible.
This idea probably dates back to the time when language developed fully among our ancestors, permitting them to create agreed-upon meanings to guide everyday behavior. And once they agreed on the importance of good relations with invisible spirits, human foraging bands probably came to rely on specialists who knew how to enter the spirit world at will and report back what the spirits wanted. Many anthropologists think that what Siberian shamans did among groups of hunters in the nineteenth century descended from and, at least loosely, resembled very ancient practices. At any rate, ritual singing and dancing allowed shamans to enter into trance at will; and when they returned to normal consciousness, they regularly explained what the spirits wished or intended. Ordinary people could then go about their daily tasks reassured, or, as the case might be, devote time and effort to rituals designed to appease or drive evil spirits away.
The idea of an invisible spirit world parallel to the material world of sense almost certainly spread with the wandering Paleolithic bands that occupied almost all the habitable lands of the Earth between about 100,000 and 10,000 years ago. At any rate, all the diverse and remote hunters and gatherers whom anthropologists began to study in the nineteenth century believed that invisible spirits surrounded them and had a lot to do with everything that happened.
What made animism plausible was the experience of dreaming. A sleeping person might remember strange sights and encounters, even with dead persons. It seemed obvious that when humans were asleep something invisible—their spirits—could and did travel about among other disembodied spirits. Moreover, breath offered a clear example of an invisible something—a spirit—essential to life, which departed from dying persons permanently, thus joining, or rejoining, other disembodied spirits.
Trance, too, was interpreted as arising when a person’s spirit departed temporarily and returned with news from the spirit world. Illness could also be attributed to an evil spirit that, by invading the body, upset normal health. Rituals for driving out such spirits and for defeating other spirits that were interfering with particular human hopes and purposes became central to what may be called animistic religion.
Surges of unusual excitement and extraordinary cooperative efforts were also interpreted as examples of how a single spirit might enter into the community as a whole or those persons who bore the brunt of common exertion, whether they were defending their home territory against an invading human band, stalking and killing a dangerous animal, or initiating young people into their adult roles by secret and solemn rituals. These and other occasions brought people together emotionally; and the excitement that sustained commonality could be attributed to a spirit shared, at least temporarily, by all.
Details of how different peoples attempted to control their interaction with the spirit world differed endlessly from place to place and must have altered across time too, so that we ought not to assume that recent practices accurately replicated ancient patterns even among Siberian hunters. But it is worth recognizing that animism in all its innumerable local variations endured far longer than successor religions have done. In fact, animism still pervades a great deal of common speech and thinking.
Athletes and businessmen often invoke “team spirit”; musicians and actors hope for an “inspired” performance. And we all admire a cheerful “spirit,” whenever we meet such a person.
For millennia, management of relations with the spirit world in the light of animistic ideas and techniques sustained human communities in good times and bad. It made whatever happened intelligible and within limits curable as well. Every surprise and disappointment was believed to be the work of one or more spirits; and when matters were sufficiently critical, customary rituals could always be mobilized to find out exactly what kind of spirits were interfering and what sort of appeasement or change of human behavior might solve the problem.
A belief system that explained so much and served so many peoples across so many generations deserves serious respect. It was humankind’s earliest effort to work out a worldview, uniting in an undifferentiated whole what later separated into science and religion. Everything later thinkers did to elaborate human knowledge took off from animism, modifying and eventually abandoning it; and it is not really surprising that all of us still sometimes fall back on animistic phrases and habits of thought in everyday life.
Bibliography:
- Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture. New York: Harper.
- Jensen, A. E. (1963). Myth and cult among primitive peoples. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Lowie, R. H. (1970). Primitive religion. New York: Liveright.
- Eliade, M. (1964). Shamanism: Archaic techniques of ecstasy. New York: Bollingen Foundation.
See also:
Free research papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom research paper on any topic and get your high quality paper at affordable price.
ORDER HIGH QUALITY CUSTOM PAPER
Always on-time
Plagiarism-Free
100% Confidentiality
