Origin of Stories

Recently (2016) there was a study (link) and subsequent media blitz on the age of some fairy tales. The researchers found that some of the stories could potentially be 6000 years old tracing back into the Indo-European language family. That’s mind blowing, mostly that the stories stayed similar enough over the millennia to be identified as similar for so long even though the languages they are told in evolved to be unintelligible to each other without significant effort to become fluent.

Obviously other stories have been developed since the first ones were told (no writing back then) but the influence of the oldest traditions holds on. There are plenty of stories that have won Nobel prizes which are based on religious traditions. The old stories are useful as a reference metaphor, or familiar setting for which an artistic or political statement can be inserted, or grown.

Yama on a water buffalo. Used as evidence for the *Manu- and *Yemo- creation story.

Part of the mind-blowing aspect of the extremely long-life stories can have is thinking about what unknown influence they have on us in our lives today. We frame our morals based on these stories whether we think we do or not. We make sense of events in terms of stories, it’s key to our rational minds which we usually take as independent thoughts. So then how monumentally different would our world be today if in those original stories more protagonists were women? What if a bird was the fundamental monster instead of a dragon/snake? What if the hero story was replaced with might always makes right? Maybe those changes wouldn’t have lived as long as those which did, but I think civilization would be profoundly changed.