As a member of a Native American sweat lodge, I have always known that similar practices exist in Europe, particularly Finland and Russia.

The European sweat baths are mostly for recreational purposes, though there are accounts of them being used in tandem of religious holidays and practices.

For me and my close friends who I sweat with, we certainly accentuate the ceremonial aspect of it and it's actually pretty central to our spiritual lives.

I love learning about the ways in which other people do the sweat bath and found an interesting anthropological paper on the matter and wanted to share it with you guys.

One question that is on my mind is: Which culture brought it from Asia to the Americas? Was it the Ancient North Eurasians? A common ancestor between Eurasians and Native Americans?

This would have been more than 13,000 years ago and sounds plausible to me. the Saami and other ethnic groups of North East Europe and North Asia have a fair amount of Ancient North Eurasian DNA.

The practice is ancient and has always been with the natives of the Americas; they brought it with them. It is most prevalent in the northern hemisphere but is practiced as far south as Brazil (maybe further).

Here is the link https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.w....62.6.02a00040

Here is a Quora post on the topic of shared ancestry https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-Q...-what-happened

I would love to hear your stories and what you know about it.

Thanks!