A HISTORY OF STORYTELLING.

The oldest form of storytelling as well as the most personal and intimate is of course ORAL STORYTELLING. Around as long as human language, it is said it is one of the things that distinguish us from other animals. Evident in ancient cultures such as the Australian Aborigines, community storytelling offered the security of explanation (how life began, why things happen etc) as well as entertainment and enchantment.

What of other ancient societies though? Prehistoric man used CAVE PAINTINGS, for what purpose we are not entirely sure, though some would argue that they were the first 'written' stories. With the earliest known European ones dating back some 35,000 years, perhaps the most well known example is the Lascaux Caves discovered by some children in the Pyrenees Mountains.

And the 'FIRST CIVILIZATIONS'? What of Egypt where the first known short stories were written down some 4000 years ago. What of the middle ages which saw the maturing of the story form, both oral and written? What of the 'new world' were many stories were recorded by central American cultures in stone and on perishable materials such as hide?

And modern man, how are his stories told? Ever since AD868 when the world's earliest dated printed book, THE DIAMOND SUTRA, was created in China, the printed word has become ever more important with some even arguing that the PRINTING PRESS was the best invention of the fifteenth century. Not so, argue others - that would have to go to digital technology which in 1995 saw the first book, Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts And Creative Analogies: Computer Models Of The Fundamental Mechanisms Of Thought, being sold over the Internet by Seattle-based Amazon.com AND 2010 which saw Steig Larrson become the first member of Kindle's Million Club, selling more than one million e-copies of the Millennium Trilogy which brings us to .......

Tomorrow and the future of storytelling.

With the rise of technological advances, the traditional art of storytelling is transforming, some would say dying out to be replaced by video, the Internet, mass market books and the other forms of media that will no doubt follow. AND yet others argue that storytelling will never die out, parents will always tell bedtime stories which will always play an important role in our culture. What do you think?