I think this might be bringing us close to the end of the prehistory of religion. Maybe this is the end of the beginning, as Churchill said.
The first part was fascinating, but it is also pure speculation. There is next to no empirical data about the spiritual life of early man. I suspect that as I read on I will find this history to have been back-filled based on what Eliade believes about modern religiosity.
I do not know that the plotting backwards from what we have now is necessarily a bad idea. Presumably there is a track that ran from somewhere, and looking at the part we have found will do at least some work in showing where the line began.
