"We are,as a species,addicted to stories. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories" ~ Jonathan Gottschall.
Ever wondered what every human ever in history has in common? It's that they have at least once in their life heard or told a story. You'd think stories started existing around the start of civilizations but stories pre-dates even them. Stories and the art of storytelling has existed since the time humans developed languages. Even the author Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind claims that languages developed to gossip and share information and what is gossip if not a very little story. Over centuries we fell in love with stories and we continued to create them because of this today stories have become part of our lifestyle and that's why I said stories are everywhere
Let's start with what is a story? According to Google "A "story" is a narrative account of real or imaginary events, often told to entertain, instruct, or inform" in simpler words “it's narration of real or fiction events by one human to another” very simple definitions, there are different kinds of stories; they have their own words and definitions Myth, Legend, fairy tale, folklore, fable and epics they are different but at their core stories. A lot of stuff is at its core a story: the lessons you learn in school :stories, the songs you listen to :stories, the movies and shows you watch :stories, the books you read :stories the dreams you see :stories and even the simple act of telling a friend what happened on the weekend is a story.
Homo Sapiens were wanderers. They traveled from one place to another. They did something that is not a ritual nor something that will benefit them but they just tell at night when they huddle together for warmth around fire they told stories. Stories of old stories of new ones to entertain some to caution as someone wise said we don't tell stories because we are human we are human because we tell stories. Perhaps this night time story is Integrale in our being. That's why even today we tell our kids bedtime stories.
The first story we hear is a bedtime story that is simple and soft, then as we grow older our stories become complicated we listen to less and less stories.
The oldest story in the world is considered to be The Epic of Gilgamesh though it might not be so as oral tradition might have stories older than it but it is the oldest written story. It might be the most ancient to us but even it starts with “in ancient time….” So people have always told the stories of ancient times. Since the oldest story in the world exists there should be a youngest story in the world too but time keeps going. We can't name every new story written but I'll give you a chance, take a pen and paper or open your notes app, write or type your softest memory and when you complete for a moment that is the youngest story in the world. just for a moment then someone else somewhere in the world completes their story too and your story loses the position.
Stories have a big impact. In England one famous story is of King Arthur, a great king of ancient times. However, it is so famous that the line between fiction and reality blurred historians have spent years debating if Arthur existed or not. Another famous story from the Middle East, the story of Arabian nights one thousand brides is the story of Scheherazade who in order to not get killed has to weave stories in stories every night until she gets spared sometimes stories save you literally. The longest poem in the world is Mahabharat from India. It is in Sanskrit and widely known across the Indian subcontinent; rarely would you find an Indian who has not heard it.
Stories have influence I'll give you an example an experiment was done called The "Significant Objects" project by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker they bought 200 things online and then they hired 200 authors to write each object a story after they put the object now with a story each on ebay they received profit ten times than the original money spent. Just think how many times you have bought something because that one actor or actress wore it in a movie? How many Harry Potter fans bought wands even though they are absolutely useless just to feel like their favorite character? Disney stories became so famous they had to sell the merchandise. Many books, shows and anime have their own merchandise and that is the power of stories and that's how stories are even in the things you buy. So in short stories really are everywhere this article too is a story a story of stories perhaps but it is. We humans too are stories as a wise character once said "we are all stories in the end" so let's try to be good stories in the great story of Humankind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_poem
https://significantobjects.com/
