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The evolution of the shaman's cultural toolkit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2018
Abstract
A complete picture of shamanism's cultural evolution requires an understanding of how the professionalization of shamanism affects the distribution of knowledge within societies. We suggest that limiting knowledge to fewer people could impede the accumulation of functional knowledge within shamanism. On this basis, we make further predictions about how the domain of shamanism could change and collapse.
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Target article
The cultural evolution of shamanism
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Author response
Why is there shamanism? Developing the cultural evolutionary theory and addressing alternative accounts