The Lonely Night Sky

    Last night, I couldn't sleep--so at two AM I went for a walk.   I live in a rural area and there was no moon,  so  the country road I walked was pitch black except for starlight and the dull glow of a distant city on the horizon.   There was no wind at all.  It was utterly quiet, and as I looked at the stars I felt a shudder of loneliness--extreme loneliness.  The quiet night sky is cold and lonely beyond description.
     People don't look at the night sky much any more.   If we're still awake at night, we're indoors watching TV.  And our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn't watch it much either.  Hunting can be done at dawn or dusk, but not in the dark.   But since sheep were domesticated nine or ten thousand years ago, our herding forebears spent thousands of years gazing at a night sky.   A shepherd must keep watch over his flock to guard it from predators, and if you are awake and outdoors,  there is not much to look at except the sky. And the sky is lonely and frightening.
     By the dawn of the bronze age religions that later came to dominate Western thought, herding peoples had already been staring at the sky for five thousand years.   Other religions came into being--religions based on planting and reaping--but those are not the philosophies that endured. It was the herding peoples who gave us the religions that spread across the globe.
    So what unique perspective was gained from seeing ourselves alone against a cold, lonely sky, and how did that  perspective shape Western ideas about man and the universe?  How were the bronze age religions that are still practiced today shaped by our herding ancestors, and by the loneliness of the night sky?