A history of shamanism remains elusive. The article examines four scholarly approaches—prehistoric rock art, cultural myth origins, memory studies, and cultural resistance movements—and finds each inadequate. Focusing on early Chinese shamanism, it critiques these options and then turns to the frameworks of Mircea Eliade and Roberte Hamayon as two alternative pathways. The author proposes a third way between them, aiming to construct a viable history of shamanism without relying on the rejected approaches.
Shi (1993) observes that Chinese scholars view shamanism as a prehistoric phenomenon that declined in post-industrial society, yet they are puzzled by its continued vitality in the present day. The paper examines this apparent contradiction, suggesting that shamanism persists and adapts in modern contexts, challenging the assumption that it is solely a relic of the past.