You cover a fascinating mix of topics, unite them under magic, and then relate them to one another again-fascinating way.

I wonder about the inevitability of pantheism in "pre-civilized" people. Are apes, elephants, etc, pantheistic to any degree? Or was pantheism a meme (in the original sense) that a kook father passed on to his children, they were better at surviving, and so eventually outnumbered "apantheists" (non-pantheists)?

Generally, I tend to think human behavior toward nature is natural. All species want to "defeat" the challenges to them in their environments. And they probably don't see it as something horrible. It's seems like the burden of proof is on any hypothesis that says there is something fundamentally different about how humans see the world compared to "higher" animals. (Cf. "Your Inner Ape" by Frans de Waal.)