The concept that humans are storytelling creatures comes about through the oral traditions that have been passed down through millennia in every culture. These stories sought to preserve the history and share knowledge acquired. The stories may reflect knowledge about the animal kingdom or natural events that needed to be made sense of.

For instance, many cultures share the same stories of a great flood – this is the story of the Ark in early Biblical history as well as the story of the Seven Sisters (Pleiades) and the kidnap of the youngest by Orion as people across the planet observed the night skies. This story is found in both Northern American indigenous tales as well as our own first nations people.

We tell stories to children – often as metaphor and the Steiner education system allows children to explore these stories, appropriate to their stage of cognitive development. The stories start with the Grimms fairy tales, Norse myths and progress to Greek myths in Year 5 and stories of the Romans in Year 6. 

As adults we often tell of our life experiences and some choose to be defined by their stories that may be coloured through their own lens of perception.

Trinkets purchased on trips overseas help us to remember the travels that we can no longer take and we can reminisce and retell the story of our experiences as we visited different lands and cultures.

We like to sit and listen (particularly around a camp fire) of stories big and small of travels, (often embellished) emotions experienced along the way and we can learn and draw our own conclusions from these stories.

Stories of family history were (and still are) passed down from generation to generation, along with favourite recipes and gardening tips. The stories can be listened to, without the need to be able to read or write and therefore even young children of pre school age are avid listeners as their social and cultural mores begin to be imprinted into their subconscious.