Sunburst Six: 1. The Sun part 1

From Wikipedia:
History of observation
Early understanding
Like other natural phenomena, the Sun has been an object of veneration in many cultures throughout human history. Humanity's most fundamental understanding of the Sun has been of a blazing ball of light in the sky, whose presence above the horizon creates day and whose absence causes night.

In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Sun was thought to be a solar deity or other supernatural phenomenon. Worship of the Sun was central to civilizations such as the Inca of South America and the Aztecs of what is now Mexico.

(Indeed, the first monotheist religion, which lasted for about 10 years in ancient Egypt, was based on worship of the sun, Aten, as the only God. The Pharoah Akhenaten built a new city at Amarna and the new religion lasted for ten years before Akhenaten died. That pharoah's son, originally Tutankaten, is more famously known as Tutankhamen. He changed his name when he abandoned his father's religion.)

Many ancient monuments were constructed with solar phenomena in mind; for example, stone megaliths accurately mark the summer or winter solstice (some of the most prominent megaliths are located in Nabta Playa, Egypt; Mnajdra, Malta and at Stonehenge, England); Newgrange, a prehistoric human-built mount in Ireland, was designed to detect the winter solstice; the pyramid of El Castillo at Chichén Itzá in Mexico is designed to cast shadows in the shape of serpents climbing the pyramid at the vernal and autumn equinoxes.

In the late Roman Empire the Sun's birthday was a holiday celebrated as Sol Invictus (literally "unconquered sun") soon after the winter solstice which may have been an antecedent to Christmas.

Regarding the fixed stars, the Sun appears from Earth to revolve once a year along the ecliptic through the zodiac, and so Greek astronomers considered it to be one of the seven planets (Greek planetes, "wanderer"), after which the seven days of the week are named in some languages.