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My hunch is that agriculture became so critical to the survival of growing civilizations (food requirements) that anything relating to it acquired deep existential meaning. A seemingly judgmental mother earth became the first god to venerate as she allowed you to live in large groups and dominate others who might be less organized... And you better not miss the first planting day of the year or you're done ... thus math and astronomy are the key to those heavy and precise agricultural temples which guided you from year to year. Probably more than a hunch lol.

History of agriculture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Agriculture involving domestication of plants and animals was developed around 12,000 years ago, although earlier people began altering communities of flora and fauna for their own benefit through other means such as fire-stick farming prior to that.[1][2] Agriculture has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. The Fertile Crescent of Western Asia, Egypt and India were sites of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered in the wild. Independent development of agriculture occurred in northern and southern China, Africa's Sahel, New Guinea, parts of India and several regions of the Americas.[3] Agricultural techniques such as irrigation, crop rotation, the application of fertilizers were developed soon after the Neolithic Revolution but have made significant strides in the past 200 years. The Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to overcome previous constraints.