This is a six part series of short postings of a longer article viewable at this link: Insights to Humanity's "Nature Religions". These shorter periodic postings may make reviewing the article more time efficient for you.
The Ainu had no written language. Their stories were orally conveyed from generation to generation over thousands of years. Word of mouth was the only way in which their traditions were perpetuated. They believed conversations between deities sounded like music. Therefore their stories were sung in epic poems called Yukar. Elderly women sang these stories to their grandchildren and thereby perpetuated the tradition of appreciation to, respect for, and admiration of the deities and of Nature.
For example, in their traditional lifestyle the Ainu gathered firewood by collecting dead tree trunks and dry twigs but seldom acquired them by cutting down living trees. They respected the river-god and never drained dirty or contaminated water into a river or washed in a river; for all water courses were considered sacred and therefore had to be kept pristine.
Virtually all Ainu today are fully modern in all their ways and well adapted to modern life; but many still offer up prayers of greetings to the forest-god when entering a forest for the collecting of firewood or food. And when they find herbs or mushrooms, instead of taking all they can, they take only a few, preferring to thin them out and take only what they believe to be an adequate and necessary share. Taking all they can, for the simple reason that they can, is regarded as an act of shame. The collected mushrooms are placed in a coarse basket and thus the spores are scattered in the forest to enhance their reproduction. As in the old days of the Ainu, many modern Ainu also show deep appreciation to the souls of animals and the plants they harvest, being acutely aware that humans must gain their nourishment from the bodies that these animals and plants give up for them.
The Ainu achieved excellence in many fields, such as arts and crafts, dressmaking, music, dancing, and story-telling. In these fields, Ainu culture is still active, and many traditional Ainu seek out and employ the best possible ways of using their skills and wisdom for contributing to the welfare of all human beings with an ancient, nature-friendly, and harmonious culture, developed over a vast period of time and manifested to this day through the pristine and beautiful forests, lakes, seashores, and other natural habitats in their care.
From the Neolithic age of primarily hunter-gathers, to the Neolithic revolution, into the "metal ages" of copper, bronze and iron, and on to the other "revolutions" such as the Industrial Revolution, it seems that humanity moves farther away from respecting the nature of their deities, their planet, and each other and instead consume its bounty without mindful respect, replenishment, and reverence. Humanity, as the Ainu note, is the heart of respecting, revering, and "recycling" spirit to perpetuate life on Earth.
As humanity shifted its focus from living with nature and respecting its spirits, it seems that with its evolving spirit of possession, loss, fear, struggle and strife followed the Neolithic revolution leading to ever better and stronger weapons for deadly use.
It is time for humanity to return to respect for spirit. It is time for humanity to revere the soul/spirit of all animated things. It is time for humanity to resume its function in the flow of spirit from the living to the dead and back to the living.
I believe that concepts such as these, or at least similar to these described of the Ainu, account for the care that early humans rendered to their deceased and the (mostly) cooperative spirit with which they lived their lives until a spirit of possession and selfishness began to predominate.
This paper on the Ainu truly has offered us an insight into Humanity’s early “Nature Religions.”
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