A very good checksum. Even if the listener might not always be able to recite a saga or poem, she would likely be pretty able to detect a deviation from the sta

A very good checksum. Even if the listener might not always be able to recite a saga or poem, she would likely be pretty able to detect a deviation from the standard telling. I think the rhyming did not exactly prevent changes, but made patches obvious. Kinda like git and source control. :) Oral tradition has been proven to be extremely stable under the right circumstances. Australia has tales about ancestral hunting grounds which have been lost to the sea for millennia. https://www.sott.net/article/291976-Australian-aboriginal-stories-of-ancient-sea-level-rise-have-survived-for-10000-years https://www.sott.net/article/291976-Australian-aboriginal-st...