Getting lost in a good story is a great way to relax and escape reality. Stories engage us, they distract us, and they entertain us. Maybe the function of stories is to give us a way to avoid our troubles by entering imaginary worlds. These days we’re more worried about paying bills and meeting deadlines than we are about getting eaten by a tiger, so the causes of our stress may be quite different, but the fact that life can be stressful remains the same. Here’s one idea: From the Pleistocene to the Information Age, human life has always been full of stress and strain. But let’s at least consider some possible evolutionary advantages storytelling might bring us. We also shouldn’t rule out the possibility that it’s just an evolutionary byproduct with no particular purpose at all. So, when we think about the human habit of telling stories, we need to ask whether it evolved because it gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge, and if so, whether it's still adapative in our modern, technological world. Which makes sense, because biological evolution is a slow process, whereas changes in human lifestyle can happen quite rapidly, as we know from the last few hundred years. It might have given our ancestors an evolutionary edge, so to speak. The lesson here is that even if a trait is maladaptive now, it might once have had an adaptive function. Now it’s too easy to find sugary foods, and they’re usually of the wrong kind, so the sweet tooth that was once adaptive becomes maladaptive in the current environment of mass produced, refined sugar products. But since then, humans have made huge advances in how we grow crops, process food, and distribute it. Sweet foods gave our ancestors an injection of energy when high-caloric foods were in scare supply. 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.
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