planets

If love didn't exist in ancient times, we have no definition of love to compare our current definitions of love against, thus both the statement you make and consequently the question you ask are vacuous.

Aside from the logical arguments. Maybe love was present in those times, but our primitive minds weren't sophisticated enough to define it. Perhaps we expressed love by clubbing members of the opposite gender over their heads and dragging them back to our caves. God on the other hand, must surely have been treated with unreasonable amount of respect. If we can't put into words the magnificence of a sunrise now, almost a millenia ahead (most rely on muted reverence i guess), we can imagine how people of the past might have expressed their awe.
I made a naughty assumption here - the ability to reason removes fear. Just as procuring knowledge has been thought of as a successive removal of the relevance of God. Granted, I am not justified, but some priests in the christian order (or was it catholic i don't recall) did think that long long ago.