No, Chris, you're anthropomorphizing the animists' supernatural realm. I understand why--that's how we do the sacred realm in our societies--but that's a gross misrepresentation of animism. It is not that there is some intelligent, supernatural entity that "inhabits" people and things; the animist notion of "spirit" is more like a sacred force. It has nothing to do with our idea of spirits, gods, elves, vampiri, or angels. I'll grant you this: the belief in the "supernatural" realm is common across time and place. However, the belief that this supernatural realm is inhabited by "nonhuman intelligences" is far from universal.
Miles
^^^^^ CB: I agree with your discussion Miles. I also think that much of the essence of the first cultures was ancestor "worship"/kinship. We know pretty certainly that kinship systems were central and definitional of the first human societies. But when one thinks about it, kinship systems are inherently ancestor "worshipping" ( and we must unload the word "worship" of most religious content, in the ways you have mentioned.)as kinship is relating to living people based on relationships traced through dead ancestors. Focus of some type on dead ancestors is critical. Also, the system was thought up by some ancestors who intended to "send messages", whole cultures, to their descendants that would last after their deaths. In this non-mystical sense the process is "super" natural, in that it gets across the natural death of an individual barrier. But "afterlife" is not literally an individual living after death , but living through descendants.
I don't ignore the "spirits" , the "animes", in nature of animism, but kinship/ancestor "worship" is important to primary cultures as well.
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