I agree with what you say, lmp! for the ancient people their gods were real and their actions mattered to them; understanding the nature of their gods may well help them understand their own function. Or something like that...
The sky is an interesting thing. For many ancient religions, the sky was the place where the gods dwelt. The mighty Ziggurats of Mesopotamia stretch up into the Heavens and are believed to have acted as portals for the gods to ascend and descend. It is not only the Creation poem of Genesis that describes it as dividing the waters above from the waters below. It seems to act as a sort of shield against the heavenly waters. Indeed, the Hebrew word for what we call 'the firmament' actually means, literally, a 'beaten metal plate' usually armour. In some traditions (especially Egyptian), mountains are said to hold the sky up. Indeed, some Egyptian texts suggest that the sky was considered to be made of a sort of iron of which pieces often fell to earth. It is not uncommon for the sky to be made before the sun. Often the Sun is a watcher of the skies and the earth. Horus of Egypt is a good example.
I think we all need to remember that Tolkien was one who loved the myths and legends. Science and cosmology were not his forté, so we can't expect them to be his prominent motifs in Middle Earth. We can argue over how true these myths are, but in the end, will that really get us close to what is going on in Middle Earth? Tolkien said in an interview that Middle Earth was our world but at 'a different level of imagination'. I think this is the point. The human imagination is always looking for explanations for the world around us; what better way than to tell stories? We can't assume that all ancient people were just mindless idiots, they had more sense than we often think. Ideas and the progress of stories is only stopped by those greedy for power for themselves. Stories have power, and if you control the stories, you have a lot of control over people. That way tyranny lies. It is therefore interesting to look at some nomadic myths which go through lots of changes, often based on what they see and experience. Many of the tales of the Torah may well be such; Nomads' tales passed from generation to generation.
Urm... I think I'm heading off on a tangent here...
The sun is an important figure to humanity. It gives our little planet more than 90% of its energy. As it is the dominant figure in the sky, I suspect that those who looked around and saw that the world wasn't exactly perfect, made some sort of connection. Perhaps this is where the idea of a pre-sun time came from; the desire to return to a state of none-corruption.
This is mostly guesswork, you understand...
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