How has the role that the sun has played during ancient times made humanity want to worship it?
All throughout history, sun gods were recognized as a necessary force in the heavens to our lives here on earth and are still worshipped for sustaining life as we know it. Firstly, as civilization began and humans transitioned from hunters/gatherers, farming became the profession that allowed cities to flourish, a profession that requires sunlight. Because the ancients weren’t knowledgeable about photosynthesis, or many other modern sciences, myths and gods were created to explain natural phenomenons, including the sun in the forms of Ra for Egypt, Amaterasu for Japan, Huitzilopochtli for the Inca Empire, and countless others. But ancient mathematicians
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This also meant prediction of longer days, because staples they grew such as wheat required full sun, so their method of prediction ensured good harvest on those types of crops as well. When crops grow, we have the sun to thank, and base upon the photograph, in the agriculturally reliant country of India, a sun god is still honored. Another important aspect of the sun utilized by humanity was its regularity that made it useful for mathematical and architectural applications. The Aztecs and Mayans designed detailed calendars using the sun’s movements and divined the seasons by calculating when the solstices fell. The sun also served as a basis for structures like the Stonehenge, and places like Machu Picchu that were often used for the worship of the sun. As technology was driven forward by the sun, religion surrounding it followed. Thirdly, the ancients viewed the absence of the sun as chaos, or as a symbol of their gods being angry with them, so worshipped it to guard against disasters when events such as solar eclipses took place and scared them. For example, the Greeks believed solar eclipses meant the gods were angry with their ruler, so would offer up some prisoner in the ruler’s place, as well as