Although we have discussed the correlation between settled societies and temple-building religious culture, the correlation of the lack of native temple-building culture (particularly among the ancient Iranians and Israelites) appears especially useful in examining the potential connections between ecological landscapes and the development of ancient religions. What struck Herodotus as notable, this lack of temples, warrants examination, particularly given the connections between these two religious cultures, which mark them more alike to one another than to neighboring societies. In addition to a similar lack of temple-building culture (and the associated observations of worshipping outdoors), the ancient Iranians and Israelites are both said to have come from long established mobile pastoral roots. Also the religions of the Israelites and ancient Iranians would become what could be considered, arguably, two of the 'original' monotheistic religions of the ancient world. It is difficult to deny the possibility that these three features – a lack of temple-building culture, a society constructed around mobility rather than settlement¹, and a monotheistic worldview – are intrinsically interlinked.

It would seem logical that, given the necessary lack of permanent building culture associated with mobile societies, the development of outdoor (or non-temple) worship is natural; among other variables, it might be this aspect which offered the earliest kernels of belief in a religion which would facilitate the development of the monotheistic worldviews we might identify in these cultures. It is reasonable to consider the usefulness of mobile, universally accessible, deities to the religions of mobile societies. In order to understand the significance of the connections between the lack of temple-building culture, mobile society, and monotheism, we must understand the lineage of development of a monotheistic worldview from the religions of the ancient Iranians and Israelites to to Zoroastrianism and Judaism. It is the development of this worldview which, like the development of mobile society, took place within the context of an agriculturally marginal landscape.