they were at the mercy of the elements. Crops could be destroyed or not ripen if it were too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry; volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, and storms could end their lives or condemn them to a slow death by starvation; disease could lay waste everything they had worked to build. Is it any wonder, then, that they saw in nature a source of transcendence, a force greater than themselves, which they needed to appease if they were to survive?
