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the notions of masaâthe âhumannessâ of all beingsâand heâthe undifferentiated, transcendental reality beyond all physical differentiation. Human predationâhunting, fishing, and gatheringâis construed as exchange, and killing for food is represented as a generative act through which death is harnessed for the renewal of life. Such an ideology has powerful implications for human actions. Animal âothersâ are treated as âequalsâ and âpersons,â parties to a moral pact governing relations within human society as well as the grander society of all beings. Rather than proclaiming the supremacy of humankind over other life forms, thus legitimizing human exploitation of nature, Makuna eco-cosmology emphasizes manâs responsibility towards the environment and the interdependence of nature and society. Human life is geared to a single, fundamental and socially valued goal: to maintain and reproduce the interconnected totality of beings which constitute the living world; âto maintain the world,â as the Makuna say. In fact, this cosmonomic responsibility towards the wholeâand the accompanying shamanic knowledgeâis, according to the Makuna, the hallmark of humanityâ (pp. 200â1).

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P. 36: A BOOK BY THE PERUVIAN AMAZONâS INDIGENOUS PEOPLE

This book, El Ojo Verde: Cosmovisiones Amazónicos (The Green Eye: Amazonian Cosmovisions) is a treasureâsee AIDESEP (2000) and www.perucultural.org.pe.

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P. 37: SHAMANS ARE TRANSFORMERS

Canetti (1960) writes: âThe capacity of humans to transform/ metamorphose themselves, which has given them so much power over other creatures, has hardly been studied and understood yet. It is one of the greatest enigmas: each person has it, and uses it, and everyone considers it perfectly natural. But few people recognize that they owe it the best of who they areâ (p. 373). The quote in the main text is from Reichel-Dolmatoff (1987, p. 10).

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P. 37: LASCAUXâS BIRD-HEADED MAN

Campbell (1959) writes: âMoreover, there is another uncanny painting, even more suggestive of the mystery of this Stone Age cathedral of hunting magic, at the bottom of a deep natural shaft or crypt, below the main level of the floor of the caveâa most difficult and awkward place to reach. Down there a large bison bull, eviscerated by a spear that has transfixed its anus and emerged through its sexual organ, stands before a prostrate man. The latter (the only crudely drawn figure, and the only human figure in the cave) is rapt in a shamanistic tranceâ¦. The man wears a bird mask and has birdlike instead of human hands. He is certainly a shaman, the bird costume and bird transformation being characteristic, as we have already seen, of the lore of shamanism to this day throughout Siberia and North Americaâ (pp. 300â1). Davenport and Jochim (1988) write regarding the bird-headed manâs four-fingered hands: âFour is the precise number of digits that a bird has. The replacement of each human hand with a four-fingered birdâs foot was a deliberate and, indeed, sophisticated ploy of the artist to make the image more bird-likeâ¦One is constrained to wonder what the reaction of the artist would have been if told that fourteen or more millennia after his death, many authorities on his art would have so lost contact with the natural world as to be unaware of the significance of his putting four âfingersâ on each hand. The artist has, in fact, portrayed the humanoid as half bird and half man, bird from then waist up and man from the waist downâ (p. 560). Giedion (1957) writes: âI share the opinion of S. Blanc, of Les Eyzies, former Inspector of Historic Monuments, that this bird man is in fact standing upright at the moment of supreme exaltation. One arm, with a four-fingered hand, points toward the bird on a pole, the other points toward the collapsing bison with its spilling entrails. The man is ithyphallic and bears signs of the highest excitement and concentration of his powersâ¦. When I first visited the caverns in 1949, I asked a local photographer to take a picture of the bird man from the ground of the âwell,â shooting on a plane without tilting