17). A that they assumed that the entire world of plants and animals, even the land itself, was sacred

Paleolithic humans did not see themselves as better than other features in the natural world. They thought that everything in the natural world including plants, animals, bodies of water and the Earth itself contained spirits (Oelschlaeger, p. 17).

A that they surmised that divinity could take many narural forrns and that metaphor was the mode of divine access

The belief that all objects contained spirits led to the idea that divinity is present in all things. They did not create greater and lesser gods because they did not see any one element of nature, including themselves, as superior to any other element in nature, (Oelschlaeger, p. 21) but used metaphors to explain their relationship to the rest of the world. An example of that would be totemic beliefs (Oelschlaeger, p. 13).

A that they believed...

21) rather than using fixed points in time as modern society does (clocks and calendars). This cyclical view demonstrated that nature renewed and replenished itself (Oelschlaeger, p. 24).
A that they supposed that ritual was essential to maintaining the natural and cyclical order of life and death

Paleolithic humans did not exploit the world's natural resources. They experienced "cognitive dissonance," or actions that clashed with their beliefs, if they did things such as hunt and kill animals, even though nature had provided the animal and they needed to eat the animal to survive. They designed rituals to make actions such as hunting acceptable to the rest of the natural world (Oelschlaeger, p. 17).