Recent discoveries that have changed how we think about human origins

The inspiration for the study appears to be to explore why humans do and animals don’t appear to have schizophrenia, and assuming Neanderthals are closer to animals.

I agree about calling it conjecture though. The finding had marginal p-values in a study that appears to be hiding its sample size (it doesn’t disclose the ratio of schizophrenia cases to controls in its four case-control datasets) and so is quite possibly underpowered.

That seems consequential.

Even the evil corporations actually turn out to be evil just because of incompetence (carls junior actually takes over child care if it deems their parents unable; the soda company genuinely was shocked that their soda shouldn’t be used to irrigate).

Except the one genuinely evil person (the pimp) who turns out is not from that time, and thankfully only pops up in the end to set up the sequel.

I would choose idiocracys universe to whatever we have even today, where a good fraction if not the majority of the world population has decided that selfishness and bigotry are the way to go.

Myths are more than mere stories. Joseph Campbell illustrated four functions of myths: metaphysical, cosmological, sociological and psychological. Campbell also neatly summarizes in his 1949 work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces,

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind.

An astute quote by Ludwig Wittgenstein is very applicable to your shallow description,

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

The origin stories are about creating identity and revealing deep aspects of psychology and sociology. They may also contain echos of earlier events.

They were not written to fill up ignorance, but to teach wisdom.

Taught that way, they contain many helpful insights.

The claim that Adam and Eve is "literally what happened" is ridiculous on its face. Talking snakes? Really?

But there is a lot of wisdom in the story.

"One telling of Hadza's oral history divides their past into four epochs, each inhabited by a different culture. According to this tradition, in the beginning of time the world was inhabited by hairy giants called the akakaanebee "first ones" or geranebee "ancient ones". The akakaanebee did not possess tools or fire; they hunted game by running it down until it fell dead; they ate the meat raw. They did not build houses but slept under trees, as the Hadza do today in the dry season. In older versions of this story, fire was not used because it was physically impossible in the earth's primeval state, while younger Hadza, who have been to school, say that the akakaanebee simply did not know how.

In the second epoch, the akakaanebee were succeeded by the xhaaxhaanebee "in-between ones", equally gigantic but without hair. Fire could be made and used to cook meat, but animals had grown more wary of humans and had to be chased and hunted with dogs. The xhaaxhaanebee were the first people to use medicines and charms to protect themselves from enemies and initiated the epeme rite. They lived in caves.

The third epoch was inhabited by the people of hamakwanebee "recent days", who were smaller than their predecessors. They invented bows and arrows, and containers for cooking, and mastered the use of fire. They also built huts like those of Hadza today. The people of hamakwabee were the first of the Hadza ancestors to have contact with non-foraging people, with whom they traded for iron to make knives and arrowheads. They also invented the gambling game lukuchuko.

The fourth epoch continues today and is inhabited by the hamayishonebee "those of today". When discussing the hamayishonebee epoch, people often mention specific names and places, and can approximately say how many generations ago events occurred."

The "Adams" is after Douglas Adams, because it happened 42,000 years ago.

― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon