Scientists studying a 4.4-million-year-old fossil named Ardi may have uncovered the evolutionary step ["missing link"] that turned ancient [nonhuman] climbers into early [human-hybrid] walkers
Here’s what there is to learn when reading this Popular Mechanics' story:
Ardi is the oldest known partial skeleton of a hominin and shows foot features that are transitioning from vertical climbing to bipedal walking.
While Ardi has the primitive grasping big toe of the more apelike human ancestors that came before her, other parts of her feet are more evolved.
It is Ardi’s talus, a bone in the ankle, that lies somewhere between the morphology of the same bone in apes and humans.
As humans, it’s important to remember that some of our oldest primate ancestors were apelike creatures.
Besides our much larger brains and visibly obvious differences, such as facial [structure and] features, one thing we evolved to be much more adept at than chimps and gorillas (which we, according to Darwinism, diverged from millions of years ago) is walking on two feet.
But just when did human predecessors first descend from the trees and walk upright?
A 4.4-million-year-old female skeleton named Ardi may answer that question. Predating even the iconic Lucy (Australopithecus) by a million years, she belongs to the species Ardipithecus ramidus and is revealing more about our human origins and how we became bipedal.
Unearthed in the Ethiopian desert back in 1994, Ardi is the oldest known partial hominin skeleton, though her species has been known since 1925 under the name Australopithecus ramidus.
Biological anthropologist Thomas Prang of Washington University in St. Louis and his research team discovered that Ardi was able to walk upright but still retained a grasping foot and other apelike features.
“Our observations of the human and ape fossil record are inconsistent with recently proposed models of human origins, which envision the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees as a generalized arboreal ape,” he said in a study recently published in Communications Biology.
“Instead, our results strongly imply that humans evolved from an African ape-like ancestor.”
Related video: 300,000-year-old fossils: The true origin of Homo sapiens (History with Kayleigh Official)
My name is Kaylee, and I guess it's safe to... (13:41)
Homo sapiens [not plural homos ("mankind") but Latin for "Thinking man"] belong[s] to the Homo-Pan clade, a group that evolved from a common ancestor and includes [violent, aggressive, militant] chimpanzees, [peaceful sex-centered hippie] bonobos, and both extant and extinct hominin species [Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Almasty, Yakkhas, Yeti, Orang Pendek, etc.]
This is part of a larger clade that gorillas also belong to. It has been argued that Ar. ramidus was more humanlike than apelike and had already evolved out of climbing trees vertically and dropping to all fours and walking on its knuckles in order to get around on land.
What Dr. Prang found was that Ardi is a mashup of primitive and modern features. She has a big toe designed for grasping branches, but other features of her feet, cranial base, and pelvis suggest that her species was adapting to bipedalism.
There is one bone that especially stands out: Ardi’s talus, a bone in the ankle which is also the second largest bone in the back of the foot. It transfers body weight between the lower leg and foot and helps African apes climb.
The talus enables dorsiflexion, or the backwards flexing of the foot, and inversion, the sideways turning of the foot. Both put the animal’s center of mass in a position closer to support, so apes are at much less risk of suffering lethal backward falls.
In ape species that primarily climb trees and primarily use dorsiflexion for vertical climbing, the forefoot is shorter than those of bipeds and quadrupeds, so Dr. Prang’s team turned its focus to the front of Ardi’s foot and also figured out her approximate body mass using the widths of the talar trochlea, or the upper joint surface of the talus.
There have been previous arguments that the morphology of the talar trochlea may not be the greatest indicator of how apes and early humans moved. Gorillas, chimps, bonobos, and gibbons have short forefeet for their body masses, while orangutans and larger monkeys have the longest forefeet.
The human forefoot is longer than those of chimps and gorillas and shorter than those monkeys, but there is still some overlap with bonobos. More
Extraterrestrials have intervened many times.
Michael Cremo, the Forbidden Archeologist, has something to say to the contrary: Human life is FAR older on this earth (bhumi) than science yet admits. And "modern humans" are a misnomer because we are far older, according to ooparts and other pieces of inconvenient (and suppressed) evidence in the fossil and archeological record: We are not evolving but devolving and have been for hundreds of millions of years (in yugas and kalpas as declared by the Dharmic religions).
I was traveling as a vegan through India which, while mostly Hindu, at that time had about 100 million Muslims. (It now has 200 million or more).
I came to a strangely barren outdoor marketplace made of stone and clay. I watched from a distance as a bad smell of BBQ wafted through the air like an accident. Imagine the smell of burning plastic, upholstery, oil, textiles, and diesel fumes.
Men began to congregate, each at their own stall with animals, mainly sheep, lambs, or goats in tow. I blended in, holding still, just observing. And I began to realize these were butchers, killing animals by slicing their throats, beheading them, draining their blood, separating their corpses into portions, and piling bloody flesh on the stall tops for sale.
Shoppers, Muslims following their religion to eat the dead and Hindus violating theirs by buying carcasses (and therefore paying butchers to kill) for consumption, which is at odds with ahimsa ("nonharming"), were gathering.
The Dharmic religions enjoin humans to abstain from killing and from encouraging anyone else to kill. Butchers are encouraged to slaughter when people pay them to do it. Am I blameless for eating meat? It would be as if the Mafia godfather were to say, "I've never killed anybody" when he has hired and directed men to kill by paying them to do so. Is he blameless or as blameworthy as those Mafia men for all those killings? Butchers, paid for yesterday's killing, kill for tomorrow in full expectation that there is money to be made by those not doing the dirty work.
The flies. The dirty hands. The dust and pollution of uncovered stalls. The floors of stalls were a sheen of blood. There was some baying of the young sheep.
The men all seemed very nice, not yelling or argumentative, all in their workaday mode, thinking nothing wrong with slaughtering and selling in unhygienic conditions.
A modern human family walking on all fours?
Then, thinking of karma, I saw it. No one seemed to pay any mind, but I could not wrap my head around what people must be thinking they were seeing and why it was so. People probably go along to get along by not thinking.
An Ulas family member or distant relative, walking on all fours through the blood slats, was going from stall-to-stall begging. He had a Muslim cap like the others and clogs (rope and wood sandals) on his feet, which gave the appearance and sound of cloven hooves, as he ambled from butcher to butcher, who pitied him (or wanted him to move on).
They have him a few coins (backsheesh) or slivers of red flesh. To explain it to myself, I imagined that this man -- in a past life or earlier in this one -- was a butcher like them but then went crazy and decided to go on all four like a dog-duty ascetic.
But he was no ascetic, not one to do penance or tapas (fiery austerities), not Hindu or a member of one of the Dharmic religions. Yet, by his concurrent good deeds, possibly giving to beggars, he managed to gain rebirth in this world (on the human plane) rather than The Downfall (niraya), the worlds of woe that result from killing living beings and other cruelties.
Karma is such that the way it works out is not only strange but incomprehensible, one of the Four Imponderables. It is possible, particularly in this world of mixed karma (skillful and unskillful deeds), that one form of karma interferes with the other. Killers are not always immediately reborn in perdition.
It is possible by good karma (keeping the Five or Eight Precepts) that merit is made that counters unskillful actions for a time. The result of killing animals is not that one will one time be killed or reborn in hell but that it will happen again and again and those mental impulsions (javanas) formed in the doing come to fruition by conditioning a rebirth. One act (good or bad) has exponential karmic-results (vipaka, phala), ripening like fruit.
The man walked like a tall, skinny cow from booth to booth. The butchers gave charity. And he moved on to work the whole marketplace. I turned in disbelief, gobsmacked, and saw a girl selling piles of colorful powder dyes. It is not clear in what, ubiquitous plastic bags or wrapped in yesterday's newspaper. The piles were perfect and very likely synthetic and she seemed miserable to be there.
Then the smell hit me again and I saw smoke. It was a kind of hibachi, and an old Muslim man was placing something on the sooty grill. The smoke did not seem to bother the miserable salesgirl, but from a farther distance, it sure bothered me.
The man smiled at me, seeing my camera. I approached slowly and got close enough to discern what was burning. It was a pile of small heads of recently living lambs. It is the strangest thing to see a beheaded face separated from its torso, disconnected from its neck. The eyes were gently closed and I felt sure they might open at any moment. Was he cooking their brains in the skulls?
Surely, this was butcher offal (trash). What was he doing? I came to understand that he was singing the hair off to sell the heads for buyers to eat the face. Like a dog gnawing on a bone for marrow and gristle, scraps of remaining tendon, the smear of blood or scent of flesh, someone would buy this.
Price? 5 cents (It's hard to do the arithmetic conversion with moving exchange rates, and this was a long time ago when the US greenback fetched about 40 rupees). The man kindly smiled at me. All the men were nice, seemed nice, seemed well adjusted to their task, with wives and families at home, well-fed with lots of dead meat. India is a kaleidoscope. I thought that man an anomaly. But here is a whole family:
Family that walks on all fours have 'undone the last three million years of evolution'
Story by Harriet Brewis, Indy 100, 8/27/24
The skin on the palms of their hands is as thick as it is on their feet (60 Minutes AUS/Indy 100).
.
All families have their own quirks and habits, but one group of relatives has such a distinct trait that scientists have branded them a total anomaly of the human species.
I told you, Darwin. - No, Wallace, I already knew.
The Ulas family has been the subject of evolutionary fascination for years after they were discovered in a remote village in Turkey walking on all fours. Back in the early 2000s, a scientific paper was published on five of the Ulas siblings and their strange bear crawl-style of movement, with experts divided over the cause of the anomaly.
In the years following the paper’s publication, evolutionary psychologist Prof. Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics (LSE) travelled to Turkey to meet with the extraordinary family.
Alfred Wallace, the unfamous father of evolution
The Ulas mother and father had a staggering 18 children. However, of these, only six were born with quadrupedalism (walking on all fours), which has never been seen before in modern adult humans.
“I never expected that even under the most extraordinary scientific fantasy that modern human beings could return to an animal state,” Prof. Humphrey told 60 Minutes Australia, which made a documentary about the family back in 2018.
“The thing which marks us off from the rest of the animal world is the fact that we’re the species which walks on two legs and holds our heads high in the air,” he added. More
(Buddha's Wisdom) March 30, 2025:
🔍 WHAT IF WE FELL INTO OUR PHYSICAL BODIES?
What if we weren't born into a body but fell into one? An ancient Buddhist text called the Aggañña Sutta (DN 27) describes space beings of pure light who once floated about freely through space until they alighted on earth, devolved, and developed something we all struggle with today — sensual craving or desire (tanha). That first craving for sensual pleasure began our descent into increasingly dense physical form, creating humans bound by the very cravings that landed us here and kept us stuck in the quagmire of craving, karma, and karmic results. DISCOVER:
How the Buddha taught that consciousness preceded physical form, not the other way around
The striking parallels between Buddhist cosmology and modern scientific theories
Why a human birth is considered extraordinarily rare as the Buddha taught
The unexpected connection between desire and the densification of our physical bodies
How understanding our origins can transform our approach to spiritual practice today
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Were we once beings of light?
02:06 The Buddhist cosmological view
06:17 Scientific parallels with Buddhist origin stories
08:40 The mental evolution of humanity
12:41 Why human birth is so precious
16:33 The mystery element: Where do we go from here?
The Buddha's Creation Story: Myth as History and Inspiration
(Doug's Dharma) Should ancient stories be looked at as historical myths or as inspirational literature? Let's look at both options through the lens of the Aggañña Sutta, a famous, early Buddhist creation myth. 📙 New book by Dr. Doug Smith, PhD: A Handbook of Early Buddhist Wisdom, with foreword by Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi. 🧡 Find this material useful? Check out Patreon and get fun benefits like exclusive videos, audio-only versions, and extensive show notes: dougsseculardharma
Thus have I heard. The Exalted One (the Buddha) was once staying near Sāvatthī, in the East Park, inside the mansion of Migāra's Mother. Now at that time Vāseṭṭha and Bhāradvāja were passing their probationary period among the wandering ascetics, wishing to become fully ordained Buddhist monks.
Then in the evening the Exalted One, having arisen from his meditations, came down, and was walking back and forth in the open air, in the shade of the mansion. When Vāseṭṭha saw this, he told Bhāradvāja, adding:
“Let's go, friend Bhāradvāja, let's approach the Exalted One, because we might have the good fortune to hear from the Exalted One a talk on matters of Dhamma (Doctrine)."
“Even so, friend," Bhāradvāja replied. So Vāseṭṭha and Bhāradvāja approached the Exalted One and, having saluted him, they walked behind him as he walked back and forth. Then the Exalted One said:
“Vāseṭṭha, being Brahmin (brahmana) by birth and family lineage, have gone forth from a Brahmin family and home into the left-home life of a wandering ascetic (sramana), do the other Brahmins blame and revile you?
“Venerable sir, yes, indeed, Brahmins do blame and revile us with characteristic abuse, copious, not holding back."
“Vāseṭṭha, with what words do they blame you?
“Venerable sir, Brahmins say: 'The Brahmin caste is the best.... Only Brahmins are genuine children of Brahmā, born of Brahma's mouth, offspring of Brahmā, created by Brahmā, heirs of Brahmā. As for you, you have renounced the best human rank and have gone over to that low class — to shaven recluses, to the vulgar [nouveau-riche] rich, to those of dark skins, to those born of Brahma's feet. In these terms, venerable sir, do Brahmins blame and revile us with characteristic abuse, copious, not holding back....
"Vāseṭṭha, surely those Brahmins have forgotten the past (ancient lore) when they say so? On the contrary, Brahmin females, wives of Brahmins, are known to be fertile, are seen to be pregnant with child, bringing forth and nursing children. Yet, it is these very [human] womb-born Brahmins who say such things… 'Brahmins are genuine children of Brahmā, born from his mouth; his offspring, his creation, and his heirs'! By this they make a travesty of the nature of Brahmā. It is false what they say, and great is the demerit that they thereby earn." More (suttacentral.net)
Inside the world of Radhe Maa: India's 'Godwoman' | BBC
(BBC World Service)
BBC World Service is a British public broadcast service. March 18, 2025: Radhe Maa (named after beloved Hindu Goddess Radha, Krishna's beautiful consort and object of devotion or bhakti) is one of the few women in India's controversial phenomenon of "godmen," who command large followings and claim to do miracles.
The BBC has got rare and exclusive access inside this "godwoman" palace, to understand this world of faith and fear, where followers are told donations bring miracles and disobedience could lead them to harm. Click here to subscribe to our channel 👉🏽 bbc.in/3VyyriM
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BBC World Service, March 18, 2025; Omg Desi Kali Radhey Maa Gopi; Morgue Official (Gnostic Gospel Christianity clips); Ashley Wells and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
Choanoflagellate colony stained to highlight DNA and other features (Nicole King lab)
Mono Lake’s extreme environment, characterized by high salinity and toxic substances such as arsenic and cyanide, may have driven the evolution of this distinctive species.
.
California discovery may explain evolutionary arising of animals
Microscopic choanoflagellate B. monosierra
(The Brighter Side of News) Mono Lake, nestled in Northern California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada, is a haven for unique life forms [as it fills with water washing down from Yosemite National Park's alpine lakes, most of which evaporates faster than it can be replenished].
Its iconic tufa formations and thriving populations of brine shrimp (aka fly larvae) and alkali flies showcase an ecosystem adapted to the lake's hypersaline, alkaline waters.
Now, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley have identified a microscopic organism in this extreme environment that could illuminate the early evolution of life.
The discovery is a single-celled organism called a choanoflagellate, a group that holds special significance in the study of evolution. Although not animals themselves, choanoflagellates are the closest known living relatives of animals.
Their biology offers vital clues about the transition from single-celled to multicellularlife. What sets this particular species apart is its microbiome.
Unlike other choanoflagellates, which typically consume bacteria, this species forms a stable, physical association with its bacterial partners.
This makes it the simplest known organism to host a microbiome, providing researchers with an unprecedented opportunity to study how early interactions between single-celled organisms and bacteria influenced the evolution of complex life, including animals.
This could explain life.
“Very little is known about choanoflagellates, and there are interesting biological phenomena that we can only gain insight into if we understand their ecology,” says Nicole King, a professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. More
Ancient tribal protectors of Mono Lake: Kucadikadi ("shrimp eaters" or "fly people"), Northern Paiute of California
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? It's very simple in reality. Only in theory it's impossible to answer because it's a philosophical paradox or causalitydilemma. The conundrum is a kind of logical fallacy of getting caught up in categories, terminology, and semantics, losing sight of the fact that we as onlookers are the ones creating the arbitrary labels, determining the limits of categories, and making the subjective judgments to include somethings and exclude others.
The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens, a situation where it is not clear which of two events should be considered the cause and which should be considered the effect, to express a scenario of infinite regress, or to express the difficulty of sequencing actions where each seems to depend on others being done first.
Wittgenstein would be dismayed. The answer, of course, is the proto-chicken, a creature which is a "chicken" because it lays chicken eggs but is not a chicken because it itself was not born of such an egg. Yet, if it looks like a chicken and clucks like a chicken, it is chicken enough because it does the most important thing, which is to give birth to chickens rather than it itself being born the way "chickens" are thereafter. (The exact same evolutionary question might be asked of Homo sapiens or modern humans. Which came first, the human or the womb? If all humans are born of wombs and all human wombs are produced [only] by humans, we're in the same dilemma. (Neither is completely true, but we begin with this assumption to our detriment).
The excellent thing about this discovery by UC Berkeley, my own alma mater, is that it gets at the reality and avoids the logical trap, causality dilemma, or infinite regress logicians would be caught in. There is a transitional creature that is neither yet fully animal nor solely pre-animal because it has a stable microbiome it has partnered with. Similarly, humans born of a womb and giving birth via a womb must have been preceded by a humanoid creature who did not do both.
Where did animals like us come from? That is the question at hand. If this is how "animals" behave and get defined (born of womb and birthing others via a womb), we will trap ourselves in assumptions and the rules of logic. Once we broaden the category to include the proto-animal, or in this case the choanoflagellate with a microbiome, we can begin to see how things might have gone through an intermediary phase not allowed for, assumed, or understood by our strict logic. So hooray for the transitional creature that yet remains alive to be studied that we might understand these animal bodies we identify with as and cling to as "self."
(Curious Archive) Jan. 17, 2025: Reality is chaos…
CHAPTERS
0:00 The Evolution of Absolutely Everything
0:27 Life Begins with Soup
1:32 Cambrian Goofy Goobers (+ Altruism?)
3:14 Meme Evolution?
5:37 Goodbye, Dinosaurs
6:52 An Invasive Parasite
8:17 Welcome, Humanity!
10:40 The Universe Cares if You Do
12:47 After the Last Tomorrow
14:09 Will it All Fade?
16:13 I Love You, Too
17:18 Ground News Ad
Additional Media Shown: Life on Earth, Out of the Cradle, Noah
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I do not own the images, music, or footage used in this video. All rights and credit go to the original owners.
♫ Music Used: Sword Search (Zelda), Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (Mozart), The Blue Danube Waltz (Johann Straus II), Factotum Aria (Rossini), Vorte Toast (Bizet), Symphony No. 5 (Beethoven), Marche Militaire (Schubert), Menu (One Must Fall), Swan Lake Act II (Tchaikovsky), Canon in D Major (Pachelbel), Sky Above, Voice Within (Skyrim), Four Seasons Spring (Vivaldi), Komorebi (Gris), Gerudo Valley (Zelda), Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven)
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“A bit of altruism makes V-shaped flocks of birds possible” by “Virginia Morell” https://www.science.org/content/artic...
“Ancient Bones Offer Clues To How Long Ago Humans Cared For The Vulnerable” by Andrew Curry https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsand...
“The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins
“Why Did Memetics Fail? Comparative Case Study” by Radim Chvaja https://direct.mit.edu/posc/article-a...
“Your stuff is actually worse now” by Izzie Ramirez, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2352958...
The Delusion and Danger of Infinite Economic Growth by Christopher F. Jones https://newrepublic.com/article/15521...
“Is that cereal box getting smaller? Welcome to the bewildering world of shrinkflation.” By Daniel de Visé https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/...
“Early human ate young Neanderthal” by Jennifer Viegas https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna30870318
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“Companion Animals and Us: Exploring the Relationships Between People and Pets”
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This Buddhist creation myth BEATS Judeo-Christian Bible and Islam's Quran
(Maya Wisdom) Explore the profound teachings of Buddhism's primary creation myth, the Agganna Sutta, and its relevance to modern scientific understanding. This video examines:
1. The Buddhist perspective on cyclical cosmic evolution and devolution
2. How it challenges traditional creation narratives
3. The concept of Dependent Origination and its implications
4. Buddhism's unique approach to deities (devas, light beings, shining ones) and divine intervention
5. The Buddha's emphasis on personal experience over scriptural authority.
Gain insights into how this ancient wisdom offers a transformative view of human nature, societal structures, and our relationship with the cosmos.
Sadly, the Agganna Sutra is not really a proper creation myth. It is only a general explanation of life on earth, and it doesn't even fully explain that. Its principal interest is to emphasize the power and significance of karma (deeds, those things willed, carried out, and stored up). How did human life begin on this plane, this planet, this earth? One day a light being (possibly a light beam if Dr. Sugunasiri's theory (Dhamma Aboard Evolution: A Canonical Study of Agganna Sutta in Relation to Science) holds up under scrutiny. He suggests it is symbolic or metaphorical, not a literal accounting. The Buddha was famous for being able to take ancient teachings from the subcontinent (proto-India) and earlier Vedic culture, which possibly encompassed the great Indus Valley Civilization and city-states of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, that people would have been familiar with and imbuing them with Buddhist knowledge of life, the universe, and everything. The problem with creation myths, including Science-ism's Big Bang Theory, is that they begin in the middle. For instance:
What was that? - Just another Bang
SCIENCE MYTH 1: Once upon a time, before everything came into existence, this happened, then it came into existence in a spontaneous Big Bang.
Q: Well, how did that happen if there wasn't anything yet?
A: Uh, umm, question does not compute, insufficient data, syntax error, program will now shut down for regularly scheduled maintenance.
4H MYTH: (Popular in the Dharmic religions). One day God (who spontaneously arose in the midst of a great void and nothingness) got bored so He made everything (maya) else to amuse Himself, and to keep it interesting and full of drama (lila) forgot it was just Him (because we're all Him or figments of His imagination in this illusion), so it's alright whatever happens, just a part of a big game with Hells and Heavens, Hierarchies and Holes in the story (so don't read too much into it).
God animated dust with breath to create Adam.
CHRISTIAN MYTH: (Applicable to all of the Abrahamic faiths, i.e., Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Yazidism, Gnosticism, Bahai, and probably their progenitors Mithraism, Zoroastrianism, ancient Mesopotamian, Babylonian, and Sumerian religion). Once upon a time, God was bored in heaven, so He made a terrarium and populated it with all sorts of creatures and even a little man like Himself, in His own image, called him Adam, gave him a partner named Lilith, whom he later divorced and remarried another named Eve, and had a whale of a time creating other fantastical living beings to be in His garden, even a scaly man who was a big smartass and troublemaker, talking Eve into all kinds of mischief so that He had to empty out the project and toss the main characters to the east, which is how we all came about in this sucky world suffering from the cradle to the grave. Nighty night, no question, time for bed!
Ooh, let's land on that blue-green one! It looks nice and inviting, and we can b*ng there.
We revolve in a cycle until liberation.
BUDDHIST MYTH: Once upon a time, in a land near, near this way, two light beings (or beams) alighted on this preexisting celestial body we call Earth, a garden like place, after flying in space and going about in their refined way. They liked it and stayed, and in so doing, they became coarser and coarser, devolving from their previous state.
Yay for Aldebaran! (Maria Orsic)
The beings were engaging in gathering, eating, tasting, and sensual experiences like sex, experiencing the results (vipaka and phala) of their collective deeds (karma), which had a profound impact on their environment, being reborn over and over, until we find ourselves in our present state with people not realizing that the things they say and do had a previous meaning they've forgotten. And that, monks, is how things in the present are like things in the past, and it's always a good idea to keep good conduct, be pure, and evolve back to that Golden Age of Truth (Satya Yuga) when things will be better before eventually, invariably, decline again and devolve in this spiraling cyclical pattern we call samsara.
Q: That's a "creation" myth?
A: No, where in the sutra does it say anything about "creation"? This is just a story about how humanoid life began on this planet/plane, devolving from a higher plane by the workings of karma.
This is how it happened, according to math.
SCIENCE MYTH 2: Once upon a time everything declined and collapsed falling in on itself then there was a Big Bounce and it re-expanded until we find ourselves and our universe expanding again as evidenced by the Doppler Effect of the redshift of visible light and there's no discernible beginning or end to it, just like the Buddha taught.
In science, anything is possible: Physicists turn light into one-dimensional gas with incredibly strange properties (IFL Science) The Big Bang is utterly dumb as a theory of everything because it says there is no need for miracles except this one. Just grant that everything came out of nothing in a nano-instant then everything else we explain will be rational, lawful (in accordance with demonstrable principles), and predictable.
Maya Wisdom (video), Sept. 3, 2024; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
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