Early Forms of Religion

Along with generalizing books by the prominent domestic ethnographer, historian of ethnographic science, and researcher of religious beliefs Sergey Alexandrovich Tokarev (1899–1985), there are many articles dedicated to various problems in the history of religion, including the definition of mythology and its place in the cultural history of humanity, the classification of magical rituals, the study of the essence of totemism, the elucidation of the ritual significance of female representations from the Upper Paleolithic era, and, of course, the analysis of specific aspects of the beliefs of various peoples in connection with general issues of the dynamics and functioning of their cultures. The main articles have been compiled in the collection presented for the readers' attention. They provide a fairly comprehensive view not only of the author's perspectives on the problems of the origin and development of various forms of beliefs and his fundamental contribution to the science of religion but also of the characteristic features of S.A. Tokarev's research style – the aim for maximum consideration of factual data, caution in their interpretation, avoidance of far-reaching and not fully substantiated conclusions, and, finally, of a concise and elegant author's style.
The book is intended for historians, ethnographers, scholars of religion, and a wide range of interested readers.