The History of Story

    I am in no way a historian of culture or an anthropologist. Nevertheless, in the course of some work on a presentation on the story of the universe, I have become interested in the history of story. In 1909, Arthur Ransom wrote a classic history of storytelling that attempts to outline the phenomenon in English literature.  Much more recently, the BBC also produced a two-part series on the history of story that looks into the long historical background to the modern novel.

    My interest is somewhat different. I have tried, for several decades to understand religious experience as a vital part of the structure of human consciousness. The phenomenon of storytelling is closely related to the development of religion among humans. Story and storytelling plays a huge role in indigenous and African cultures. The tradition runs back long before written history and serves the transmission of identity, values and traditions in these cultures. I will be looking at it particularly from what is known of human habitation particularly in Europe.

    The history of story is a fascinating part of our human development.  1,250 million years ago homo habilis appeared throughout Asia and Central Europe leaving behind a legacy of hand axes. This was an marvellous new development for the survival of the species. However, at that point language, and therefore stories did not exist. There was no such thing as religion. The concentration was on the immediate struggle for survival. However, the fabrication of tools indicated a use of memory and a capacity for planning. Animals, of course, also use tools, but the scale of hand axes was a qualitative leap.  

    Much later, about 500 thousand years ago, homo erectus settled into Asia and Southern Europe. During that period fire was mastered. This too marked a major new development in human culture since it greatly assisted survival by lowering the vulnerability to disease as a result of eating raw meat and other foods.  Beyond that, the mastery of fire meant played a role also in creating the first elements of a culture as family groups gathered in the evenings around the campfire for warmth. It was a perfect setting to begin telling stories of what had happened during the day. What is not clear is the extent to which language matched the setting. This would require a pivotal turning in human culture.  

    More or less 200 thousand years ago archaic homo sapiens, with a first glimmering of self-consciousness, began the practice of ritual burials in a circle of stones with animals placed nearby to nourish the departed. Archaic homo sapiens occupied central Europe from the area of the Czech Republic to the eastern border of France. At this time, the importance of harmony with the mysterious forces of the world around them had led recognition of the importance of gestures that would unite them to the spirit world that inhabited everything around them.  This was the prelude to the emergence of modern human beings sometime between 120 and 40 thousand years ago out of Africa.

    The Neanderthals, the first modern human beings, left behind an enormous artistic output in music, painting and sculpture. We find also the beginnings of a more sophisticated form of language that enabled an elaborate use of memory and  communication on a symbolic level.

    Some painting in caves of this period reveal shamanic figures, consciousness of a world of spirit and a desire to be integrated into the cosmic processes that dominated their life, especially  birth and death as well as the cycle of seasons. There are elaborate burial sites and a bear cult that continues to exist in one part of northern Japan.

    Sometime around 40 thousand years ago human sapiens sapiens, our own species, appears.  They are marked by an expanded use of language though symbolic sound and gesture. Increasingly, there was a need for teaching, for handing on knowledge for survival in very broad terms.  In other animals this is minimal. For humans it became a major period of early life. The telling of stories was designed not just to learn hunting and defense skills but to be in harmony with the forces of nature around them. Humans are vulnerable and have to depend on a harmonious relationship with those forces.

    From about 11 thousand years ago, there is a mysterious absence during three thousand years of evidence of human habitation in the world. The next evidence of human presence will be in Neolithic villages throughout Southwest Asia and Africa as well as the Americas. These people are engaged in raising domesticated animals and in agriculture.  Starting about five or six thousand years ago, early civilizations lie directly at the foundation of the world as we know it today

    Organized court religion will emerge full-fledged in the courts of Near-Eastern civilization, but the original inspiration through stories and gestures aimed at harmonious communion with the mysterious spirit-world that guides life and death as well as the turning of the seasons will continue to be very present right up to our day even though it is often repressed.

    Christian have a large task ahead of them to re-reat the life of Jesus in the light of this history. Jesus was an extraordinary observer of nature around him and the way in which he was able to interpret this through his life and teaching deserves much more attention.