> As far as I can tell from googling, they are just considered to be stories from Aryans that entered India. "The Vedas are considered the earliest literary record of Indo-Aryan civilization"

I'm guessing you got that quote from: https://www.learnreligions.com/what-are-vedas-1769572 Just a few paragraphs down, it says:

"Tradition has it that humans did not compose the revered compositions of the Vedas, but that God taught the Vedic hymns to the sages, who then handed them down through generations by word of mouth. Another tradition suggests that the hymns were "revealed," to the sages, who were known as the seers or “mantradrasta” of the hymns."