Literary Prehistory
The Roots of Storytelling
What we know today as “literature” began as oral tales told by hunter-gatherers. All known foraging peoples have rich storytelling traditions maintained without the aid of writing, and in at least one of these cultures 84% of nighttime conversation is dedicated to the recounting of stories and myths. Moreover, many classics of early literature–such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, Odyssey, Mahabharata, and Norse sagas–are rooted in oral traditions. These facts tell us that neither writing nor agriculture are necessary for the production of artful narratives, and that storytelling likely emerged tens of thousands of years ago, when all humans were hunter-gatherers. In short, the study of literature properly begins with the study of forager oral storytelling.
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Thanks to Indigenous knowledge holders who graciously shared their story traditions with early anthropologists and linguists, we have a record of storytelling in recent hunter-gatherer societies. Although ancestral and recent forager life differ in important ways, modern foragers offer the best available model of the ecological conditions that fostered the emergence of storytelling. These conditions, and the stories they inspired, offer unparalleled insight into the origins and nature of diverse narrative art forms, such as epic poetry, balladry, theater, ballet, opera, the novel, and cinema.
“verbal transmission of information is indirect, through people telling the story of their day’s excursion as opposed to direct lecturing of old by young. Thus . . . knowledge may be acquired mainly ‘out of context,’ in the relaxed social setting of the early evening, but it is then available when needed. . . . This system is put to use when the subject wants to listen and when the storyteller’s art gives many pegs on which to hang the information.”
—Blurton Jones & Konner (1976:344-345)
Storytelling as Virtual Reality
The emergence of storytelling was a major milestone in human evolution: it enabled individuals to recreate their experiences and share them with others. This provided an alternative to learning through personal experience. By listening to a story, audiences could learn who lived beyond the borders of their territory and whether they were friendly or hostile, where different travel routes led and the landmarks and hazards associated with them, what to do if they got caught in a blizzard, when and where different resources were available, which plants had medicinal properties, how various predators attack their prey, and so on. By recreating past experience, storytelling also fostered preparation and planning. For example, stories about warfare indicated where attacks had occurred and who perpetrated them, described offensive and defensive tactics, and reminded people to be vigilant. Similarly, stories about famine and natural disasters reminded people that ecological emergencies can and do occur, and described useful strategies for coping with them.
A story can tell you what these are useful for.
Photos by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
“Those who listened were entertained while collecting the experiences of others with no direct cost.”
—Wiessner (2014:14029)
Trial-and-error learning can be costly in terms of time, energy, and risk to life and limb. Listening to stories reduces these costs by enabling humans to acquire knowledge of an experience without actually having to undergo that experience. Humans can learn from a story that certain mushrooms are poisonous, rather than learning by eating them. Similarly, they can learn about signs–such as fresh dung or carcasses–which indicate that a predator might be in the vicinity. Thus, storytelling greatly increases the amount of knowledge a person can acquire over a lifetime. Humans can learn from the experiences of all the people in their social network and, because stories are passed down from generation to generation, they can also learn from individuals who lived decades or even centuries before them. The practice of storytelling was thus key to the emergence of cumulative culture: it facilitated the aggregation, storage, and transmission of the collective knowledge of thousands of individuals.
Photos by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
“a single lifetime is only enough to acquire a beginner’s understanding of the natural world.”
—Nelson (1997:325)
The Truth About Fiction
“The fact that virtually all traditional knowledge keepers believe myths (and legends) to be historically true whereas nearly all scientists presume they do not represent factual historical events is a disquieting conundrum that tells us more about the biases of western science than about the nature of myth.”
—Masse et al. (2007:10)
Many stories are fictional, raising the question of how they can possibly transmit useful knowledge. The truth is, most fictional stories contain only a few counterfactual elements. For example, the characters might be imaginary persons, but their capacities, goals, and behavior are nevertheless human. Consider Jurassic Park: this story’s main counterfactual premise is that dinosaurs have been revived through cloning and used to populate a “wildlife safari” theme park. Other than that, the story world is the same as the real world, enabling us to learn by observing the characters as they suffer the unanticipated consequences of this experiment. The same logic applies to forager myths, which often posit supernatural explanations for natural phenomena. As Barber and Barber note, from a Western scientific perspective, the explanatory parts of myth might be considered counterfactual, but their descriptions of local flora, fauna, and geography are accurate. In short, forager myths mirror the local environment.
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Rock carving of skier shooting moose | Wikimedia
“El cuento coincide con todo lo que es la cultura [the story matches everything in the culture].”
–Qomle’k Elder Javier Moreno (personal communication to linguist María Belén Carpio, 15 February 2022)
Anthropomorphic characters are a case in point. Although Western science may view such beings as supernatural, the descriptions of their animal traits are spot-on. Tricksters, for example, tend to be animals known for their intelligence, such as coyotes, foxes, and ravens. This principle also applies to personified inanimate entities (e.g., thunder, mountains, trees): the non-human traits of these characters are consistent with those of their real-world counterparts, and their human traits (e.g., speech) are easily recognized as such.
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Photo by Michelle Scalise Sugiyama
Fantasy is functional: fiction enables us to conduct virtual experiments in lieu of real ones, and think through their possible outcomes without actually having to suffer them. We can speculate about events that might occur, problems that might ensue, and solutions that might be implemented. Thus, just like true stories, fictional stories are a form of developmental niche construction: they enable us to create learning opportunities when they are unavailable in the real world, or when learning from the actual experience is impractical or dangerous.
Fictional narratives ask the question: “What might happen if . . . ?”