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cinsac It's actually a metaphor for the transition from an animal state to human consciousness. They didn't eat from the tree of eternal life because they had no concept of their own eventual death. The only way to prove you're immortal is to live forever; if you don't know you're going to die, you might as well be immortal. My dog doesn't know she will die eventually, so in her mind, she will live forever. By eating the tree of knowledge, they became aware of their own eventual deaths and by doing so, became human.
The other aspect of the story is about the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agrarian one. They go from just wandering around picking fruit to tilling the soil and living "by the sweat of their brow." Carl Sagan pointed out that knowledge is also made possible by our huge brains, so women being cursed to give birth in pain (because babies' heads are so big) goes along with that. No other animal has as much trouble giving birth as humans do.
These stories were what people came up with to explain their experienced reality. They're much more interesting as allegory than taking them literally, which diminishes them and is ultimately disrespectful to the people who wrote them.
