Chapter 1 Story
STORYTELLING ISN’T AN IDLE leisure activity that humans developed to while away the hours: It evolved for serious purposes, as a necessary component in the development of human culture. Without storytelling, humans could never have communicated complex information. Storytelling isn’t merely characteristic or even definitive of the human condition—it’s absolutely necessary to the existence of human culture.
The Development of Storytelling
Storytelling was a natural, almost inevitable consequence of human evolution. The human brain developed in response to the environmental pressures facing early hominids. Each major problem triggered some sort of change in the human body; if a problem could be solved by mental effort, an existing ...
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