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Two observations, first, the significance with the Sumerians, especially in context of this article, is the writing (among other things), not the fact that they
by kitsune_ 4y ago
Two observations, first, the significance with the Sumerians, especially in context of this article, is the writing (among other things), not the fact that they told stories.
Secondly, I think it's a fair assumption that there were oral traditions long before the invention of writing, but this is likely true for people living in the Middle East, or elsewhere. And as a sidenote, how can you prove the existence of extremely rich oral traditions?
- prox 4y agoOne really interesting one is that of the Vedas, where there is a priest specifically to check if there are no mistakes and errors made. From wikipedia’s vedic priesthood article : The brahman was the reciter of hymns from the atharvaveda who was largely silent and observes the procedures and uses Atharvaveda mantras to 'heal' it when mistakes have been made. So at least when it comes to accuracy, it was very resilient. I think my history teacher also mentioned something similar for the Jewish priesthood.