theatlantic: The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction Let’s...

http://lovelaylaevans.tumblr.com/post/60456816323
theatlantic:

The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction

Let’s...

theatlantic:

The Evolutionary Case for Great Fiction

Let’s crunch some numbers:  What we generally consider “ancient” time—Jesus of Nazareth and Julius Caesar time—was only about 100 generations ago. Throughout the 1.8 million-year cycle of Ice Ages called the Pleistocene, however, an estimated 85,000 generations of our ancestors lived, loved, lost, and, well, learned to tell tales. (Fossil evidence suggests that the vocal capacity for speech dates back over a million years, and it’s assumed that Cro-Magnons, who emerged 20,000 generations ago, used language of some sort.) These people were our deerskin-wearing, spear-wielding hominid protoselves. And their actions and preferences over thousands of generations, during dramatically unstable climates (a volatility conducive to evolutionary change) helped shape us. Because a variant that produces 1% more offspring than its alternative, it has been posited, can enter 99.9% of the population in just 4000 generations. 

So the question is: Can storytelling increase offspring?

Read more. [Image: Viktor M. Vasnetsov]