#mchardy

Whether it was the lore of healing plants or moral tales intended to influence behaviour within the family or tribe, the transmission process was mouth to ear.  Even today there are societies that continue this process, a process that always required specific techniques and memory training to ensure the accurate transmission of essential knowledge. While today people turn to computerised data to trace their ancestors, even a couple of centuries ago here in Scotland there were shennachies who had memorised specific genealogies over many generations.

Within stories that tell of kings and queens, princesses and princes lie social and psychological realities that lay at the heart of all knowledge and education in oral societies. Stories encompassed all life and served to continually reinforce the bonds of community so necessary in environments less technically restricted than today and thus more volatile. People in ore-industrial societies had to rely  on each other. On long, cold, dark winter nights in Scotland, families and groups of families gathered round the flickering hearth fires to listen to tales whose relevance to their way of life was absolute. Those who had the gift of storytelling were bearers not just of tradition but of knowledge, artists as well as entertainers and today, the power of the spoken word, the magic of ancient themes re-worked have not lost their power. Stories told by the fire side centuries ago on the far side of the earth can surface today in modern industrial urban garb, and though many tales form many lands in many tongues are now available in books - they are like musical notation - a place to start, but no the thing itsel! Even today in our electronic world stories are being told that have probably never been written down - some from ancient sources, others as fresh as tomorrow's bread and yet others reworked from tradition and reborn - all come from the same well. And that well is deep. Stories survive because they fill a need - social, psychological or a combination of these and just as we are basically little different form our ancestors of thousands of years ago - apart perhaps from our technological invention and disregard for the health of our environment - so stories which enthral, excite and educate us are in their essential probably little different from tales they told. After al life, death, love and the need to work to eat are fundamental to humanity the world over in all time. And some tales come from time beyond all measure. The indigenous people of Australia still tell of their ancestors hunting giant animals, known to western scientists as Diprodotons, more than twenty thousand years ago. The knowledge of these animals, and of major geophysical events like volcanoes and tsunami was passed down through oral transmission, generation to generation over many millennia.