The cross-cultural concept of shamanism promoted by Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) has stood the test of time and has been extended and refined. Eliade's conceptualization of shamanism has promoted the cross-cultural and interdisciplinary application of the term shaman. Systematic cross-cultural research has validated a universal (etic) concept of the shaman, illustrating the substantial similarities among spiritual healing practices found in hunter-gatherer societies worldwide. Archaeological research has established a deep prehistorical depth for shamanism, illustrating its central role in the emergence of modern human culture. Perspectives from evolutionary psychology have helped explain the emergence and cross-cultural distribution of shamanism in terms of adaptive psychological, social, and cognitive effects that contributed to human evolution. The worldwide distribution of shamanism reflects its basis in innate brain processes and modules and in biologically based cognitive and representational systems. Modern perspectives reject the earlier pathological characterizations of shamanism, instead...