Religion
In reply to the discussion: People Are Born with Religious Belief Argues New Book [View all]happyslug
(14,779 posts)When a Study was done on Farmers and Farmer's sayings (anecdotes) , the accuracy of the sayings was found NOT to be a factor, just the number of anecdotes they knew. These sayings are used as memory guides, disregarded when they clearly did not apply, followed when they did. The old stories started out as such memory guides, but given the lack of the ability to read and write, better remembered as a story then data. Another characteristic noted by Psychologists and other Social Scientists based on studies of how people act and how they remember things and hand down information from one generation to the next.
Most of the stories of the old gods started out as such memory guides (Orcus and Ceres were among the last two Roman gods worshiped, outlasting all the other gods of Ancient Rome and Greece for their stories reflected the crop planting and harvesting cycles thus were part of the collective memory when it came to when to plant and harvest).
We have to remember a lot of information, even today, if given out informally i.e. in the form of people talking and watching what others do and say. Prior to the widespread adoption of the idea that people should be able to read and write, people remember things in the form of stories. The reason for that is while the actual wording can change form one person to another, the underlying story stays the same (Thus it is better to read Jesus's parables to understand what he was preaching then any one line sentence attributed to him, the one line sentences are easier to misquote but the parables, being stories are harder to misquote as to point of the story and the reason Jesus used parables).
In non-writing societies (or that part of society that did not read or write, 90% of the population prior to about 1800 even in "Western Countries" such as Europe and the US) stories is how they remember "equinox, solistices and calendars" and other observations as to dates, thus their importance in most societies till long after 1800.