The Evolution of Storytelling

“How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in pre-Columbian America? Was the story of Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to the ancient East; and, if so, by whom and when?”

Homo erectus used fire – so they very likely were the first ancestors to gather around a fire, cook, eat and share stories that passed on knowledge crucial to survival: stories related to hunting, and the spirit world.

Stories, he says, are a:

“...form of culture that remains when nations, languages and faiths have long since died. There is an almost uncanny persistence and durability in the tale which cannot be accounted for in the present state of knowledge.

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Complex speech enabled cultural development, since it meant individuals could verbally share ideas and concepts.

One hundred thousand years ago at Blombos Cave on the South African coast, one of humanity’s first workshops flourished. It processed a liquified ochre-rich mixture – used for multiple purposes, including religious, medicinal, and for group identification – and stored it in abalone shells. Production involved a multi-step process, starting with a r... See more

“What is it about stories—what are their particularities—that enables them to work as they do? More than mere curiosity is at stake in this question, because human life depends on the stories we tell: the sense of self that those stories impart, the relationships constructed around shared stories, and the sense of purpose that stories both propose ... See more

We’ll never know exactly how these early hominids communicated, but it is obvious that they did. It is certain that they handed down experiences and knowledge, aided by facial gestures and vocal sounds. In this way, mimesis would eventually have led speech to emerge as the dominant mode of communication.

a means of bonding; there is a sense of closer connection to those with whom we share spontaneous and often personal stories.

Our earlier ancestor Homo erectus evolved about 1.5 million years ago. As the name implies, erectus was the first hominid to walk upright, leaving arms and hands free not only for carrying and toolmaking but also, importantly in this context, for making gestures. We know that the earliest portable representations of the human figure were created by... See more