Storytelling is one of the few human features that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures,written in Sanskrit,Latin,Greek,Chinese,Egyptian and Sumerian. People in societies of all types weave stories,from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers bringing out books,television shows and movies. And when a characteristic behavior. shows up in so many different societies. researchers pay attention:its roots may tell us something about our evolutionary past.