Amazonian Polytheisms and Animism (Excerpt by Dr. Edward Butler)
"In South America we find many and diverse indigenous traditions, as well as traditions from the African Diaspora, which we will discuss separately. In the native traditions there is a sharp ecological and social difference between the forest dwelling, stateless peoples of the Amazon, represented in the reading for this unit by works of Yanomami theology, some collected by anthropologists and some authored by Davi Kopenawa, a spiritworker and advocate for his people and for the forest, and on the other hand, the Andean cultures of the mountains and seashore, which goes back as far as 3200 BCE, in which can be discerned a series of cultural phases, the latest of which being the empire of the Inca. The distinction between ‘stateless’ and ‘state’ societies, while of heuristic value, should not be taken to imply a lesser degree of ‘development’ or complexity in the former than the latter. In reality, all societies, having all lived through the same span of time, probably exhibit the same degree of ‘development’, albeit in different directions."
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