between humans and a small group of ethereal entities called gods. It is certainly true to say that premodern agriculturists tended to be theists, but it does not teach us much about the particulars. The generic rubric ‘theists’ covers Jewish rabbis from eighteenth-century Poland, witch-burning Puritans from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, Aztec priests from fifteenth-century Mexico, Sufi mystics from twelfth-century Iran, tenth-century Viking warriors, second-century Roman legionnaires, and first-century Chinese bureaucrats. Each of these viewed the others’ beliefs and practices as weird and heretical. The differences between the beliefs and practices of groups of ‘animistic’ foragers