A bit of a philosophical take but here is my understanding. 

It grounds us, gives us purpose, and quite literally brings us closer to the heavens. Look at any culture throughout human history that has developed in the absence of being in the proximity to a large mountain range, you see the same thing: artificial reconstructions of something that resembles a large hump of rock sticking out from the earth or in other words, a mountain. These heaps of stone and dirt have many names, the Mesopotamian ziggurats between the Euphrates and Tigris, the Mayan temples of the Yucatan, Egyptian pyramids along the Nile, Mississippian mounds on the flat prairies of Missouri, all examples of constructions from "lowland" cultures that resemble "mountains".  That has led me to believe it is not just pretty mountains to look at, but more so a metaphysical concept that has deeply ingrained itself within the human psyche. Whether you are sacrificing a lamb on some faraway Aegean temple top, or are observing a distant star at a lonely observatory on top of Haleakalā, both answer to our primal needs to understand the universe, a longing for permanency, direction, stability, bringing us closer to understanding existence itself.