Heidegger is not saying that our modern concept of metaphysics is identical to those of shamans thousands of years ago.

So far as I know he didn’t - or to a large degree, couldn’t - go farther back than the Greeks. I wonder what he would have made of a shamanistic understanding of “I am”. It would have had to have fit in there somewhere, or else change his opinion.

The entire point is that metaphysical theories change over time.

Theories change, but metaphysics doesn’t. Biology changes, and not just the theories of biology. The field itself changes. Astronomy changes, because both of them are human inventions.

Metaphysics doesn’t change (even though the favorite theories do). Is metaphysics a human invention? Well that’s a metaphysical question, isn’t it. Do Shamans know the answer?

Plato has his metaphysical theories, as does Aristotle, and Kant, Leibniz, Hume, and these Perennial Shamans are proposed to as well. They are not all the same ideas and they are often in conflict with one another.

Yes, and unlike Biology or the hypotheses being developed at the LHC, none of them can be tested or proved. We will never “know” - know for sure - if even one part of any of them is true.

Isn’t it interesting, though, just to consider what the basis for any and all things to be might . . . be?

And in so doing, isn’t it the case that the impressive results of the LHC must be understood to explain only a minute part of the infinite reality that - so far as we know - exists? I would say yes.