The book, written by two famous St. Petersburg ethnographers, is devoted to the study of the thinking features of the ancient Far Eastern people - the Ainu, who preserved until the middle of the 20th century. beliefs and rituals, the origins of which go back to the Neolithic. The book is designed both for specialists - ethnographers, anthropologists, culturologists, and for a wide range of readers interested in East Asian traditions, religious beliefs and rituals, archaic features of symbolic thinking.