[For Paleolithic people], the time of origins existed not in the past, as we imagine it now in cosmology,but in this ever-present"everywhen." For the hunter crouching low in the brush, waiting for the herd to pause, the time of creation and his experience now were never far apart. For the women filling baskets with wild grain, their actions and the primordial divine acts, which set the world in motion, were always closely paired.
The daily time of Paleolithic people was set against a cosmos that was not "out there" but rather close by. It was a cosmos without birth or final death or linear time. It was a universe alive with animate and divine powers that were always present, reenergizing the world each day with the return of the sun, each month with the return of the moon to fullness and each season with shifts in light and warmth.
But culture and its needs would change and the powers animating the universe would grow distant and more difficult to engage. Divine entities that were once proximate and personal slowly became remote and willfull. It is in this understanding that the sky was the first retreat of the divine. The development of more complex cultures led to myths of the sky as the first and distant domain of the divine. (p. 17)