Proto-Indo-European religion in the context of "Sky father"

Ancient Iranian religions were a set of ancient beliefs and practices of the Iranian peoples before the rise of Zoroastrianism. The religion closest to it was the historical Vedic religion that was practiced during the Vedic period. The major deities worshipped were Ahura Mazda and Mithra from Iran to Rome, but Atar was also worshipped, as names of kings and common public showing devotion to these three exist in most cases. But some sects, the precursors of the Magi, also worshipped Ahura Mazda, the chief of the Ahuras. With the rise of Zoroaster and his new, reformatory religion, Ahura Mazda became the principal deity, while the Daevas were relegated to the background. Many of the attributes and commandments of Varuna, called Fahrana in Median times, were later attributed to Ahura Mazda by Zoroaster.

The Iranian peoples emerged as a separate branch of the Indo-Iranians in the 2nd millennium BC, during which they came to dominate the Eurasian Steppe and the Persian Plateau. Their religion is derived from Iranian religions, and therefore shares many similarities with the Vedic religion of India. Although the Persian peoples left little written or material evidence of their religious practices, their religion is possible to reconstruct from scant Iranian, Babylonian and Greek accounts, similarities with Vedic and other Indo-European religions, and material evidence.

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European has been discovered; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language, and it is the best understood of all proto-languages of its age. The majority of linguistic work during the 19th century was devoted to the reconstruction of PIE and its daughter languages, and many of the modern techniques of linguistic reconstruction (such as the comparative method) were developed as a result.

PIE is hypothesized to have been spoken as a single language from approximately 4500 BCE to 2500 BCE during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates vary by more than a thousand years. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the original homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of eastern Europe. The linguistic reconstruction of PIE has provided insight into the pastoral culture and patriarchal religion of its speakers. As speakers of Proto-Indo-European became isolated from each other through the Indo-European migrations, the regional dialects of Proto-Indo-European spoken by the various groups diverged, as each dialect underwent shifts in pronunciation (the Indo-European sound laws), morphology, and vocabulary. Over many centuries, these dialects transformed into the known ancient Indo-European languages. From there, further linguistic divergence led to the evolution of their current descendants, the modern Indo-European languages.

This is a list of earth deities. An Earth god or Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth associated with a figure with chthonic or terrestrial attributes. There are many different Earth gods and goddesses in many different cultures and mythology. However, Earth is usually portrayed as a goddess. Earth goddesses are often associated with the chthonic deities of the underworld.

In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi, etc. traced to an "Earth Mother" complementary to the "Sky Father" in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology have the sky goddesses, Nut and Hathor, with the earth gods, Osiris and Geb. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses.