Shamanism is the world's oldest religion. The rituals and beliefs of this ancient tradition were carried from Asia and Siberia into the New World by nomadic hunting bands beginning 12,000 years ago. This unique collection of essays on shamanism in Central Asia and the Indian Americas provides sound and engaging scholarship that reflects the great diversity in this fascinating field.

Over the centuries, shamanism has endured as an abiding topic of interest not only because of a human concern with the past, but also because of a common yearning to acknowledge life lived in closer symbolic relationship to earth cycles. For the reader interested in indigenous cultures and religions, this collection of essays clarifies much of the New Age speculation on universals in shamanism by bringing studies of different ethnic and historical expressions to bear on the subject.

Ancient Traditions is the result of a major conference held in 1989 at the Denver Museum of Natural History that brought together scholars and others interested in shamanism from the United States and the former Soviet Union.