Fairytales, Folklore and Myth — A Way to Reach Back to Our Most Ancient Ancestors

If you, like me, love reading about history before people started writing it down, you have to check out this CNN article:

Some Fairy tales go back thousands of years.

Did you just go “Duh!”

Me, too. One reason I’m writing my EverTwixt serials is because I want to have an excuse to do a lot of research into prehistory, fairytales, and human evolution (don’t worry, the serializations are about characters and conflicts woven together with strong storytelling, not ideas, you won’t notice my research…I save that for the blog).

It’s a big story. Keep in mind human beings have been writing down our stories for only about 5,000 years. Homo sapiens sapiens has been around 200,000. Cave art has been dated to at least 40,000 years ago (more on that subject in later blogs).

Let’s take the Cinderella tale — do you know how many versions of it there are? No one’s really sure, but fairytale historians (yes, that really is a thing) have found a Cinderella tale in most civilization’s history. Not to mention all the modern retellings (mine is Maiden Ash, if you’re curious).

When you look at those facts, is it hard to believe that the original Cinderella tale may be tens of thousands of years old? Not to me.

Think about what the family of Cinderella tales focuses on:

• being the kind of person who is kind (she doesn’t treat her stepfamily meanly, despite their mistreatment of her)
• hardworking (especially in comparison to the steps)
• patient (she doesn’t run away, but bides her time)
• willing to go for what you want even in the face of massive opposition (even when the dress she’s made herself is ruined and it looks like she isn’t going to the ball, she still asks fate to help her get there).

The help (fairy godmother) and reward (glass slippers and carriage to the ball) come very late in the story. The prince is almost an afterthought.

I wonder if anyone will ever discover a Cinderella cave painting. Wouldn’t that be cool?

I’m looking for any and all prehistory links I can find. If you have a great one to share, please drop it into the comments section.