[Serious] Literal and Not Literal

[Belacqua]

Given what I know about how people, living in remote villages away from the influence of modernism and naturalistic way of thinking, having the tendency to take these religious stories for granted, then it's reasonable that the ancient people back then more similar to these villagers than to modern scientifically-minded societies also perhaps took these stories for granted.

What do you know, non-intuitionally, concerning the thinking of these people? 

Are you sure the stories were meant to be literal explanations of nature? In every case? Or were they from the beginning intended as moral lessons? Are all such people the same? 

Then there's the question of who wrote the myths in Genesis. There's a common and almost certainly false assumption that they began with "bronze age goat-herders." Some historians think that the myths originated with the most educated and literate people long after the Bronze Age, for clear political and moral purposes.