The Periodic Fable: Science Tracks Evolution of Children's Stories

Fundamental research methods are commonly employed across the natural and social sciences. In a surprising example of inquiry into an unlikely topic, a cultural anthropologist has employed a hierarchical organizational structure most commonly linked to the biological sciences to uncover the patterns of change over time and location of the fairy tale.

As reported by The Telegraph (U.K.), Durham University cultural anthropologist Jamie Tehrani has explored multiple versions of the fable we know as Little Red Riding Hood. And he has done so through the application of the same taxonomic approach that biologists employ to categorize life forms.

Dr. Tehrani's work looks at 35 different versions of this story from around the world -- in Iran, the child is a boy, in China, the fiend is a tiger -- and his findings counter the widely held understanding of the story's origins as being rooted in 17th century France.

Through comparing thematic commonalities critical to the story of the child lost in the woods and who subsequently becomes enchanted by an unsavory anthropomorphic critter, he has found that the core common themes are traceable back to more than 2,600 years ago.

As quoted by The Telegraph, Dr. Tehrani cuts directly to the moral of the story:

“Over time these folk tales have been subtly changed and have evolved just like a biological organism. Because many of them were not written down until much later, they have been misremembered or reinvented through hundreds of generations. By looking at how these folk tales have spread and changed it tells us something about human psychology and what sort of things we find memorable."

Tehrani will be reading his discoveries aloud, to a presumably wide-eyed and appreciative audience, at the British Science Festival underway from September 5 through September 10.

Illustration by Walter Crane, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons