Every once in a while, we need to remind ourselves that our ancestors, even ancient ancestors, weren’t stupid. They were just as smart as people today, but they lacked the number of advancements we inherited to build on. We have writing and books and instant communication. Pre-literate cultures had their own way of passing along crucial knowledge in the form of oral history. The stories of things that happened, people, places, and events that are important, were related over and over again by storytelling, until the next generation knew these things intimately.
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Author and geography professor Patrick Nunn tells us about oral histories passed along by indigenous cultures that reveal important geological events that happened many thousands of years ago, when volcanoes changed the landscape and islands formed where there was once continuous dry land. These stories come from all over the world, and have been confirmed by geological studies. The ability to memorize and pass on such knowledge indicates how monumental those events were to the people who witnessed them. Of course, people remember only what they need to remember. You don’t memorize a movie when you can see it again on demand, but in 1977, it was important to see Star Wars as many times as you could because it would eventually be gone from theaters. In pre-literate societies, memorizing everything about the land, the people, and their history was just what was done to preserve that knowledge.
Some of those stories became infused with mythology over time. Nunn explains that with the need to embellish stories with explanations that kept the audience’s attention and helped them to understand difficult concepts. We can look beyond the supernatural embellishments to find the core nuggets of why these stories were crucial to pass along. Read about the oral history knowledge that is still being passed on today in a thought-provoking essay at Aeon. -via Strange Company
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Source: neatorama