“Some of the very earliest myths, probably dating back to the Paleolithic period, were associated with the sky, which seems to have given people their first notion of the divine. When they gazed at the skyinfinite, remote and existing quite apart from their puny livespeople had a religious experience. The sky towered above them, inconceivably immense, inaccessible and eternal. It was the very essence of transcendence and otheresss. Human beings could do nothing to affect it. The endless drama of its thunderbolts, eclipses, storms, sunsets, rainbows and meteors spoke of another endlessly active dimension, which had a dynamic life of its own. Contemplating the sky filled people with dread and delight, with awe and fear. The sky attracted them and repelled them. It was by its very nature numinous. . . .

At some pointwe do not know exactly when this happenedpeople in various far-flung parts of the world began to personify the sky. They started to tell stories about a Sky God or High God, who had single-handedly created heaven and earth out of nothing. This primitive monotheism almost certainly dates back to the Paleolithic period. Before they began to worship a number of deities, people in many parts of the world acknowledged only one Supreme God, who had created the world and governed human affairs from afar.”

—Karen Armstrong, from A Short History of Myth, 2005.