Story is Older than Language

Let’s go back to early man. I’m talking about early hominid. Bipedal, but nowhere close to our modern day homo sapiens. Before we had agriculture with the Neolithic Revolution. Before time kept any record. Before we, as humans, even had vocal chords.

The life of an early human was predicated upon the hunt. What sustenance could be secured for this small tribe of cave dwelling individuals? Before any hunt, early man would engage in a practice of painting the hunt on the cave walls. Hence the prevalence of cave paintings.

These paintings were called “hunting magic” – early man believed that if a successful hunt were depicted in the painting, then it would lead to a successful hunt the next day.

When I learned of this fact, I immediately equated hunting magic with story. Early man was telling the story of a successful hunt hoping to make it reality. The earliest known instance of art imitating life (or life imitating art).

Before we could speak, before we had evolved towards the development of vocal chords, we were telling stories. These stories held great existential weight, as they determined if we ate or not.

Now, is there any evidence that the painting of a successful hunt actually guaranteed the result of a successful hunt? Of course not. There is no way to guarantee such a thing.

However, the image of early man gathered around a cave painting. No language to describe the images, but simply basking in the collective experience of witnessing the paintings. The image hearkens to story. To the collective and communal experience of understanding the succession of images. The causal relationship between events. The outlining of plot points that will lead to an inevitable conclusion.

We have always told stories. How we tell them has changed, but the act remains the same. We all want to be gathered around a campfire, hearing the tale of a successful hunt.