Back in the Pleistocene, it was important to get as much sugar as we could.

That’s because there was once a time when craving sugar did give us an evolutionary advantage. While it’s true that these days we consume far too much refined sugars, leading to obesity and all sorts of other health problems, this example is a little tricky. It may well have no function-it’s just an evolutionary accident-or it might even be maladaptive, like our sweet tooth! So, the fact that we evolved with any given trait, whether it be the tendency to tell stories or eat sugary foods, doesn’t necessarily mean it has any adaptive function. Yet it’s still a fact that we evolved into creatures that crave sweet stuff. But we know sugar is like poison and eating it in the quantities we do is really bad for our health. I’ll admit, I love sugary foods, as I’m sure many of our listeners do too. There are all sorts of things we like to do that are actually quite bad for us. The mere fact that we like to tell stories does not necessarily mean that it gives us any advantage. So, we should ask the question: does the fact that we evolved into storytelling creatures mean that telling stories gives us some evolutionary advantage? I don’t know of any other species that can do it. Whether it be fiction, history, mythology, gossip, daydreams, news, or autobiography, stories permeate every aspect of our lives. And telling stories seems to be a distinctively human trait. It’s a curious fact about humans around the globe-we love to tell and consume stories. Obviously, these are related questions, but let’s think about the adaptive function of storytelling first. The other is about how storytelling is changing and evolving with human culture and technology.

One is about whether storytelling is an adaptation involved in the evolution of the human species. Our topic this week is the evolution of storytelling, which brings to mind two different questions.

Oasis guess questions state of survival