Ancient Western Religion is Eastern Religion?

The institutional religions that grew out of the classical world, like Christianity and Islam, were peculiar to a particular era of mass, top-down nations and empires that displaced smaller political and organizational units of people like tribes, and zealously stamped out all other forms of religion.

The older religion of the West was probably shamanic and was probably derived from very ancient traditions that maybe carried on in western occult and esoteric circles. The focus of that ancient religion seems to be aimed at reaching understanding of man's place in the universe and understanding the universe through an exploration of consciousness. Some clues about this remain in the Norse myths for example.

Robert Sepehrs's work suggests that the ancient religion of the west was widely disseminated and common throughout the ancient world, so perhaps religions like Tibetan Buddhism are representative of what our ancient ancestors believed.