How firelight helped storytelling evolve

New research from the University of St Andrews has developed a novel theory of how firelight was critical to the evolution of sophisticated storytelling.

In a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, researchers from St Andrews alongside colleagues from Dartmouth College, suggest that fireside storytelling may have provided the key catalyst to move human communication away from the ape-like systems our modern ape cousins still use today, and towards our uniquely human use of language.

Charles Darwin described fire as man’s greatest discovery, excepting language. Recent work has argued that these two touchstones of human evolution may be fundamentally entwined. While the importance of fireside storytelling for human societies has previously been recognised, earlier work assumed that stories emerged from an existing human proto-language.

This new work highlights how our current understanding of modern apes shows them capable of many of the fundamental basics of human communication and social problem solving – from meaningful gestures to a theory of mind. 

Read more on the University's news page.