What you've written, geo, is a good illustration of my signature line by Thomas Sowell: "All that makes earlier times seem simpler is our ignorance of their complexities." I truly believe that things were no less complex in 2,000 year-old societies than they are today. There are different dimensions of complexity, so our society might be more complex on one dimension, but perhaps less complex on another.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the question of whether or not the primitives literally believed their myths is addressed somewhat in part II, ch. 6 Folk Stories of Creation.

"It is difficult to know how seriously or in what sense these stories were believed. The mythological mode is one not so much of direct as of oblique reference: it is as if Old Man (of Blackfeet legend) had done so-and-so. Many of the tales that appear in the collections under the category of origin stories were certainly regarded more as popular fairy tales than as a book of genesis. Such playful mythologizing is common in all civilizations, higher as well as lower. The simpler members of the populations may regard the resultant images with undue seriousness, but in the main they cannot be said to represent doctrine, or the local "myth." The Maoris, for example, from whom we have some of our finest cosmogonies, have the story of an egg dropped by a bird into the primeval sea; it burst, and out came a man, a woman, a boy, a girl, a pig, a dog, and a canoe. All got into the canoe and drifted to New Zealand.54 This clearly is a burlesque of the cosmic egg. On the other hand, the Kamchatkans declare, apparently in all seriousness, that God inhabited heaven originally, but then descended to earth. When he traveled about on his snowshoes, the new ground yielded under him like thin and pliant ice. The land has been uneven ever since.™ Or again, according to the Central Asiatic Kirghiz, when two early people tending a great ox had been without drink for a very long time and were nearly dead of thirst, the animal got water for them by ripping open the ground with its big horns. That is how the lakes in the country of the Kirghiz were made." (pg. 248)

I'm reminded of the Brer Rabbit tales which were transplanted to the American south from Africa with the slaves. It seems unlikely that the slaves actually believed these tales, but at some point in their lineage, perhaps their ancestors ancients did. Although, again, the original tales were likely very different. For some reason this subject fascinates me.