One of my favorite books is the Five Stages of Greek Relion, by Gilbert Murray.

He discusses much of the general themes you are bringing up, in terms of how primitive fertility rites evolved into and solidified as the Greek pantheon and how this created a conceptual crust of tradition that stifled the foundational dynamic, of which gnostic Christianity had been an effort to revive, but was caught up by political forces co-opting it.

I might have mentioned this book previously.

So it's not that the Stone age wasn't formative, much as our infancy isn't remembered but is obviously formative to our sense of self and social health.

Like the horizon, we can't see over it, but it's as integral to our perception as what we can see.

The network of which we are a small part.