The sky was not distant abstraction but constant presence—the roof over treeless steppe, the vault containing sun and moon and stars, the source of rain that grew grass or drought that killed herds, the witness watching every action without possibility of concealment. For peoples who spent their lives beneath unobstructed heavens, who slept under stars without walls between earth and cosmos, who woke to sunrise unfiltered by forest canopy or mountain shadow, the sky naturally became supreme deity or container of multiple divine powers. This was not philosophical speculation but empirical observation—the sky was obviously there, obviously powerful, and obviously beyond human control or comprehension.
The steppe permitted no escape from sky’s attention. Where forest peoples might shelter under tree cover, mountain peoples find protection in valleys, coastal peoples orient toward sea, the nomads lived exposed—their felt tents provided minimal barrier between human and celestial, their daily travel crossed open grasslands offering no visual obstruction, their entire cosmology developed under dome of blue or gray or star-scattered black that arched from horizon to horizon in all directions. The sky defined reality—it was the boundary between earth and whatever lay beyond, the surface upon which divine will became visible, the medium through which gods communicated.