My colleagues in anthropology have long pointed out that for most of human history people operated with a very different ontology – a theory of being that we refer to, broadly, as animist. For the most part, people saw no fundamental divide between humans and the rest of the living world. Quite the opposite: they recognised a deep interdependence with rivers, forests, animals and plants, even with the planet itself, which they saw as sentient beings, just like people, and animated by the very same spirit. In some cases they even regarded them as kin.
