This writing opened with Feuerbach's comments as a brief introduction of the question which began this research: did the Persians build temples?

Chapter 1 concerns the research project which was developed to answer this question and the analysis of the data assembled in the effort. Utilizing digital geographic information systems (GIS) software, I mapped temple sites of the greater Near East through the Iron Age which are in established archaeological record. The results of this study reveal a substantive correlation between temple building culture and settlement in the region. In my analysis, I will suggest that this connection may be key to investigating the potential effects of the ecological landscape on the development of religion. Rather than investigating the temple building cultures of settled societies, however, my focus will be on an examination of the apparent interconnection between mobile societies, monotheism, and a respective lack of temple building culture.

Chapter 2 will show that the familiar monotheistic religions we might recognize as Zoroastrian and Judaism developed directly from the monotheistic worldviews of the respective ancient Iranian and Israelite precursors. Using brief case studies from Mesopotamia and Egyptian religions for support, I argue against narratives of revolution 'overthrowing' established polytheism in favor of familiar monotheism. Instead, I will suggest that, because of the monotheistic worldview that would have been refined in the development of Zoroastrianism and Judaism, it would be more useful to consider the numerically polytheistic religions of the ancient Iranians and Israelites to have been 'proto-monotheistic'. This designation is particularly useful in examining religious parallels between the two societies. These parallels cannot be extricated from other common social and economic constructions, like the development of mobile society.

Chapter 3 will address the connection of these commonalities (and parallels) to similar ecological developmental contexts. I will argue that the development of religion must be contextualized in the ecological landscape in which a particular society grew. Just as scholars consider the development of a settled or mobile society to be, in part, a pragmatic response of human beings to a particular set of environmental circumstances (available arable land, for instance), so too must we consider religion among the human constructs developed, in part, in response to the natural environment.¹ Once I have laid out my argument for this theory, I will look beyond the Near East to apply the question to agriculturally marginal landscapes in East Africa and the Great Plains of North America. In brief examination of the Maasai, Kikuyu, and Lakota, I will show that there is both support for the validity of this theory and a shameful gap in research beyond European colonial perspectives on the religions of these societies. There is enough evidence to warrant significant consideration and further examination of the effects of ecological landscapes on the development of religions.