Vast and rich, harboring tremendous biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity, and heirs to a glorious and tragic history, Central and South America have given rise to some of the most ancient, enduring, and spectacular examples of shamanistic practice documented. The Asiatic peoples who migrated to the Americas during the Pleistocene appear to have brought with them a ritual complex that integrated religious and medical functions, centered around trance states, and may have involved hallucinogenic plant use. As in the case of the Siberian cultures to whom we owe the etymology of the term “shaman,” native societies throughout Central and South America distinguish ritual specialists who enter trance to commune with the spirits for purposes of healing, divination, and other matters of individual and collective well-being. Because of the presumed Asian origins of Amerindians, and partly because the Siberian term happened to gain wide usage, certain west Asian traditions and similar Arctic and North American examples have been treated as original or more “pure” versions of shamanism than their Central and South American counterparts. Yet recent archeological and genetic evidence suggests a much more ancient date for the arrival of humans in the Americas than had previously been assumed. Keeping this fact in mind, native Central and South American shamanism should be seen not as derivative of or secondary to “classic” Asian shamanism, but rather parallel, largely independent, and equally ancient bodies of practice that have evolved and diversified in response to heterogeneous ecological, sociocultural, and historical conditions.