Notes from Youville

Notes from Youville: Storytelling: A Natural History

'Their story, yours and mine -- it’s what we all carry with us on this trip we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them'—William Carlos Williams

  Throughout human history, our lives have been enriched by the tales we’ve shared with one another. Even today, with so many advanced, high-tech entertainment options, we still find pleasure in the simple act of telling and hearing stories with friends and family. When and how did our tale-telling habits begin?   Because storytelling is likely as old as language itself, we can’t say for sure when the first storyteller enchanted his first audience. The question, “When was the first story,” unanswerable by science, demands its own story. But some experts believe that such unanswerable questions may have been precisely what led to our first storytelling efforts. Our ancient relatives (the theory goes), at a loss for how to explain some …

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