Is Mahabarath and Ramayan true

I was on a friendly chat with my manager last week. While disussing we some how came to this topic, what u feel about Mahabarath and Ramayan ( For those who doesnt know what they are they are big epics which tells about existence of hindu gods). I told that I think they are real stories and are not true incidents. Few other people got interested in this topic and joined this conversation.
My argument was they used bow and arrows to fight wars. They were primitive tools and their imagination is limited that they didnt go beyond this. For that, my manager told there were use of chakras which can kill human being. Yeah good thought but are they just imaginative minds to picturise a weapon like this. Having said that, he told the existence of place like Ayodhya as mentioned in Ramayana is true. But if chakra was true there may be atleast few places where they have told about its making (i mean the science behind). Another colleague argued saying they wanted to have this epic being understood to lay man and want to avoid such implementation part. I told there may be some atleast few supporting scripts saying about their making. But none of them were found. That ended the topic for the day.
I went home and was talking to my brother. He was also of opinion that they were just stories. My opinion was they fought war on horse and chariots. And didnt use any other big vehicles (I mean the vehicles of this era), which shows how their imagination was limited. My brother sighted the use of pushpak being mentioned there (which is like an aeroplane).
And also people say that it was one god and went to different places and there are different stories for every religion that happened at different era.
From my above posting dont think im an athiest. I just say ramayana and mahabharatha are stories. For me nature is god and religion is seeing this god in different forms.