Interesting stuff but not surprising.
I went to the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itsa a few years ago and on one of the older buildings there is a carving of a god's face that was designed around the constellation of stars that appear when it is time to plant the crops. On later buildings, the face becomes a full God with back story etc. You could see how it started as an easy and useful piece of information to tell people what time of year they should do something important, but then developed into a god that decided whether the community would have enough food that year. I do wonder if the bloke who originally designed it would have been surprised at how it later turned into an entity that needed people to worship and make sacrifices to it.
