In her book, Leadership for Turbulent Times, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote about a leader who was so admired for his verbal skills, he “drew crowds from the countryside eager to be regaled and entertained by a master storyteller.” The storyteller was Abraham Lincoln. “He understood early on that concrete examples and stories provided the best vehicles for teaching,” writes Goodwin. We think in story, talk in story, and admire those who keep and spread our stories. Their reputations spread beyond the tribe as people came from near and far to listen to them. While the tools of communication have changed, the human brain has not. The best storytellers were admired for engaging their audiences. According to Wiessner, “Stories told by firelight put listeners on the same emotional wavelength, elicited understanding, trust, and sympathy, and built positive reputations for qualities like humor, congeniality, and innovation.” The good ones were widely admired for their ability to hold an audience’s attention, to keep them laughing, and for entertaining as well as informing. Like today’s communicators, some ancient storytellers were more skilled than others. “Appetites for firelit settings for intimate conversations and for evening stories remain with us today,” Wiessner reminds us. Social anthropologists like Polly Wiessner at the University of Utah believe storytelling played an important role in the evolution of society. Storytellers were the keepers of the tribe’s memory-its culture and history.
Once our ancestors gained control of fire, they could cook food, ward off predators, and tell stories around the campfire. Storytelling around the campfire lit our imaginationĪnthropologists point to fire as the spark that ignited human evolution.
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