the story could be something else besides figurative or symbolic. it could be primitive minds trying to represent something beyond their understanding and intelligence in simple elements. like say the rib thing. imagine if an advanced race of beings was messing around with the dna of the great apes and made a humanlike offspring through experimenting. a male. then instead of starting from scratch to make a mate, they took some of the dna from the male and made a female, like the story that eve was made from adam's "rib" simple minds relating things in ways they can comprehend.

who made the dna's of all creatures, who designed that work of genius in the first place? a far greater intelligence than the ones who experiment on it and with it.