Oral storytelling: humanity's first data management system?

Abstract

Occupation of the foraging niche requires an extensive body of ecological knowledge, and humans rely heavily on social learning to master this curriculum in a safe, efficient, timely manner. This presents a formidable information management problem: In the absence of writing, how did ancestral hunter-gatherer societies accurately store and transmit their accumulated knowledge from generation to generation? Pronounced patterns in forager oral story corpora suggest a partial answer. Cross-culturally, these stories exhibit similar themes, genres, and characters, which in turn map onto critical domains of ecological knowledge. These stories also exhibit pronounced consistencies in their formal properties, predictably utilizing strategies that engage attention (e.g., ostensive communication) and facilitate memorization (e.g., repetition, rhythm, imagery). These patterns suggest that storytelling is an information technology that addresses key problems posed by our entry into the information niche: in conjunction with other forms of symbolic behavior (e.g., ritual, visual art, song, dance, games) storytelling provides a mnemonic framework for encoding accumulated knowledge, rules for faithfully copying it, and regular occasions for refreshing and transmitting it. Collectively, these behaviors may have been instrumental in the emergence of cumulative culture.