I'm not sure literature would be as highly esteemed if oral history and the bards / singers / poets had not established roots in various cultures as the way to

I'm not sure literature would be as highly esteemed if oral history and the bards / singers / poets had not established roots in various cultures as the way to convey large, abstract or emotional things. They're good relatives I think. Writing by the masses is still fairly new in the grand scheme of things. Singing songs to each other, quite a bit longer tradition, from what I can tell looking through some stuff back in uni (including an Early Middle English course).