Haruki KAGEYAMA interprets that it began as ancestral worship like kofun (burial mound) or tsuka (ancient tomb) and was then transformed into natural Shintoistic form that sees a mountain itself as the object of worship and that in due course of time the concept of ancestral deities in mountains was fused with the concept of agricultural deity.
また景山春樹は古墳や塚と同様に祖霊信仰に始まり、やがて山そのものを信仰の対象とする自然神道的な形態に変遷し、後に山中の祖霊神に農耕の神の観念が重なっていったと解釈している。