Ken Follett

See, the first form of literature, and I should put literature in inverted commas, because if we look at our oldest stories, which are the Iliad of Homer,

and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

And these are our oldest story, but it's generally thought that these were told orally long before they were ever written down.

So it seemed to me quite likely that in the Stone Age, this tradition might well have begun.

Part of the reason why early stories like the Iliad and Gilgamesh

Part of the reason why they're poems is that makes it easier to remember them.

And it seems a lot of people think, and it seems very plausible to me, that the earliest stories were in that form.

They were poems that some people learned.

Of course, it was a folk art because everybody who decided to become a poet would change and improve the stories.

The only kind of really popular folk art nowadays is dirty jokes.

If you think about a dirty joke, you hear one, you think it's funny.

When you tell it to somebody else, you improve it, don't you?

Or you change it.

Or if you're not very good, then you make it worse, but you try to make it better.

So that's a real folk art.

There are no professional practitioners.

Every practitioner just alters it in any way he sees fit.

So I guess...

that in the stone age there must have been some kind of troubadours who had good memories it probably was a father to son thing or perhaps mother to daughter they had no reason why they should be men in the stone age and it was passed down your parent told these stories you heard the story so often

Practically every night you sat next to your parent and heard this.