The various cosmological visions that we have been discussing compose a major part of the spiritual tradition of a materially simple neolithic society. It is not altogether straightforward to discern the presence of such a tradition, lacking as it is in the physical signposts around which civilizations organize their comparable systems of knowledge: the stately architecture, the fulltime specialists, the political luminaries they serve, the esoteric archives they maintain. In a rather similar situation among the Ndembu, Turner observed:

The Ndembu, indeed, compose a population and occupy a territory roughly comparable in size to the sector of the Mountain Ok covered in the preceding discussion, and are in many ways also comparable in the profusion and force of their ritual life. Yet clearly, in major respects the two traditions differ, not only because the cultural contents they transmit are historically unrelated, but also because the traditions of knowledge are differently constituted.