That we no longer know this is part of the tragedy. Language evolved as a form of participation with the world, not just a representation of it. When Whitehead remarked that all philosophy was just a footnote to Plato, he may have had this in mind. In any case, we all know the rest. Life no longer resides in the landscape, the rocks, the air.
Magic is dead.
The sacred is confined to the texts of the conquering tribes. And we are free to savage the earth. But, says Abram, it need not be so. True, the ecological crisis is largely a result of a perceptual failing. But there are ways of speaking, there are practices that can begin to restore some of what we have lost.