The rough consensus on human development is that we became anatomically modern about 200,000 years ago, and that a significant change in our thought processes happened between ~100,000 and ~50,000 years ago. That so-called "cognitive revolution" included a lot of abstract thinking and forming theories about the world without direct evidence. I guess the relationship between how things happen on earth and how celestial bodies moved through the sky was an important subject of Neolithic thought.