When people first herd thunder and saw lighening,did they think god was upset with them.?

Religion has been a way for humans to explain what they don't understand since they lived in caves. Organized religion has provided jobs for those who can make a living by explaining (preaching) to others how their religion actually matters in day to day life. When Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses he meant that most of human kind could be influenced by those good enough to manipulate them through religion for their own gain. And god is part and parcel of the dance going on between the people and their clergy.

Define "people".

Thunder and lightning have been around since the Earth formed. Six million years ago, it probably frightened our common ancestor with chimpanzees, and three million years ago, it probably frightened our halfway-to-being-human ancestors as well. Whether *either* of them saw lightning as a supernatural event, however, is an extremely dubious proposition.

"did they think god was upset with them"

Fifty thousand, or a hundred thousand, or two hundred thousand years ago, when the earliest of what would be considered Homo sapiens were forming their first animist religions, it's likely they thought *something* along those lines.

Religion was forged out of the desire to explain natural phenomena and answer questions about how things worked and why they worked that way, and it was tempered by the ignorance of how to determine the correct, natural explanations for them. It was also driven by the tendency of humans to anthropomorphize nonhuman phenomena, so that through familiarity they can be more easily related to.

A hundred thousand years ago, when humans roamed the veldt looking for meat, they knew from personal experience as well as longstanding social wisdom that spears were a formidable weapon, and understood that throwing one in the right way and at the right spot would would drop a wild boar to the ground. And so, when our primitive ancestors witnessed a giant, deafening, blinding spear of light, hurtling from the clouds in the sky to incinerate its target on the ground, it was, of course, only natural for them to assume that they had just encountered the divine spear of an incredibly powerful, supernatural being.

And, thus was religion born.

The Hebrews thought that God was angry with them up mount Sinai (a thunderous mountain) so yeah, no doubt people did think that in other lands/times too

Yes they did. When crops failed, the gods were angry and needed human sacrifice. When crops were good, gods were happy.

Apparently most modern-day americans believe this also.

Perhaps this could be true ...

Humans have worshipped that which was beneficial to them or that which was harmful to them .

In India , hindus still worship trees and cow because both give us goodies and they also worship snake because it brings death !

When peple didnt understand science they though lightning was god being pissed

as children maybe.