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Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

theguardian.com

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Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#11

Post by xefer »

There is a theory that the common motif of a bear associated with the constellation Ursa Major may have been brought to the New World from Siberia during the Ice Age over 13,000 years ago.

http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol31/berezkin.pdf

This theory goes back over a 100 years:

"Its stars seem to have been called the Bear over nearly the whole of our continent when the first Europeans, of whom we have knowledge, arrived. They were known as far north as Point Barrow, as far east as Nova Scotia, as far west as the Pacific Coast, and as far south as the Pueblos."

- Stansbury Hagar, “The Celestial Bear”, The Journal of American Folklore (JAF), Apr.-Jun., 1900

"Occasional local names notwithstanding, the possibility of the bear as Ursa Major having originated independently is inconceivable. Classical Old World mythology is replete with the bear in its role as Ursa Major. Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic all contain references to this motif."

- William B. Gibbon, “Asiatic Parallels in North American Star Lore: Ursa Major”, JAF, Jul.-Sep., 1964.

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#12

Post by danieltillett »

adekok wrote: post #10

The Australian aborigines have told the same stories for 10,000 years: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-t... The same for India: http://www.earthporm.com/5-mind-blowing-underwater-cities/ See #3. Most people don't realize just how deep human history is. Words people use every day are ~2000 years old. e.g. "via", goes back to the Roman times.

I am none too convinced by the evidence of the Australian aborigines stories. They are so vague they could just be made up.

To give you an idea how unlikely a story would survive being passed down for 10,000 years is, the Tasmanian aborigines lost the ability to fish and and even start fire [1]. Given the critical nature of this information to survival how likely is it that a random story with no survival value would last 10,000 years?

1. http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/08/08/why-did-the-tas...

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#13

Post by School-Cotton »

adekok wrote: post #10

The Australian aborigines have told the same stories for 10,000 years: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-t... The same for India: http://www.earthporm.com/5-mind-blowing-underwater-cities/ See #3. Most people don't realize just how deep human history is. Words people use every day are ~2000 years old. e.g. "via", goes back to the Roman times.

Bit of a tangent, but I enjoy the fact that "yeah" predates "yes". The latter is derived from the former (which is obviously cognate to German "ja", etc.)

Source: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yes#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yeah#Etymology

tl;dr "Yeah" is the modern version of Old English "ġēa" which also means "so". "Yes" is a contraction of "ġēa sī", or something like "let it be so".

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#14

Post by freshyill »

While the length of time these stories have survived is impressive, it doesn't seem so shocking that many stories would be passed on despite not having been written. I can imagine that even at the time they were collected by the Brothers Grimm, they were usually passed along orally, not on paper. I can't imagine the literacy rate was very high for most of that time.

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#16

Post by david927 »

DasIch wrote: post #9
the_af wrote: post #5

I have a copy of the collected stories of the Brothers Grimm from my childhood, but when I was young I skipped the preface (and to be honest, most of the "Christian" stories, which I found boring, preferring instead the fairy tales with blood, monsters, witches and the prototypical "the youngest of three brothers gets the princess/treasure"), but when I was older I did finally read the preface and was surprised to le…

These stories weren't meant to be children's stories. They just became popular as such and have been edited to make them more child friendly to the point that with Disney they're hardly recognizable anymore.

That's not remotely true. Many of these stories were specifically to protect children. If you can't watch your children all the time, you can't just tell them, "Don't go too close to the water." They'll go anyway. So you tell them, "There are Wassermen (German) / Vodnik (Czech) who will grab you by the feet and pull you in."

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#17

Post by david927 »

tsieling wrote: post #8
the_af wrote: post #5

I have a copy of the collected stories of the Brothers Grimm from my childhood, but when I was young I skipped the preface (and to be honest, most of the "Christian" stories, which I found boring, preferring instead the fairy tales with blood, monsters, witches and the prototypical "the youngest of three brothers gets the princess/treasure"), but when I was older I did finally read the preface and was surprised to le…

Not just researchers of stories, but also talented linguists who saw evidence of the lineage between different languages, and some of the rules of how words and sounds moved between them.

Charles Perrault in France was the originator here, but most countries had their version of the Grimm Brothers. The Czech Republic, for example, had Bozena Nemcova who did similar research of Czech stories at the same time as the Grimms in Germany.

Re: Fairytales much older than previously thought, say researchers

#19

Post by marshray »

david927 wrote: post #16
DasIch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories weren't meant to be children's stories. They just became popular as such and have been edited to make them more child friendly to the point that with Disney they're hardly recognizable anymore.

That's not remotely true. Many of these stories were specifically to protect children. If you can't watch your children all the time, you can't just tell them, "Don't go too close to the water." They'll go anyway. So you tell them, "There are Wassermen (German) / Vodnik (Czech) who will grab you by the feet and pull you in."

"... and stay the hell out of the woods too"
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