I found this study interesting. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that the common fairy tales may be 5,000 years old.
I wonder how they distinguished between stories that had been passed along and modified over time and those that were just re-invented somewhere else? There are only so many plot lines (most say three). Jung didn’t think they’d been passed along; he thought they were a reflection of the programming of the human brain.
Oh, I don’t know. Fairy tales about Benghazi and YouTube videos are a near three years old. And a robust economy? When was the State of the Union?
Or are those more properly tall tales?
EJM Witzel argues that Eurasian myths go back 30,000 to 40,000 years.
“The Origins of the World’s Mythologies” Oxford, 2012