To our eyes, the systematic placement of carefully conserved seeds into the ground in the spring is not a ritual, while the systematic placement of ancestors bones into the ground on some other occasion is. But this is only because we know the former “works” and the latter, presumably, does not. The people who engaged in both practices made no such distinction. For them a sacrificial altar and a dry storehouse were equally functional, equally essential protections against the vicissitudes of nature. Presumably these people really believed in the efficacy of what they were doing; they were not, like many of today’s masters of ceremony, just “keeping a tradition alive”.]

I understand the argument here, that the altars are there because that’s just what people did to protect themselves. Such behavior would therefore not be considered relational, and it wouldn’t be, because they didn’t have the capacity for it. Hmmmm…. if that makes the case that they weren’t fully human, then the idol worshippers of the Old Testament weren’t fully human either.