Tracing the trail of Red Riding Hood

[Erik_Kowal]

An AP story on MSN News describes some interesting research led by anthropologist Dr Jamie Tehrani from the University of Durham, using techniques which until now have been restricted to phylogenetic analysis. With their help, he has traced the geographical and cultural origins of the folk tale Little Red Riding Hood, and he is now applying the same type of analysis to other folk stories. Dr Tehrani believes his research could shed light on the migration patterns of humans in ancient times.

"Little Red Riding Hood may be commonly depicted as pale-skinned and blonde but she has distant relatives in Africa and Asia, research has shown.

Scientists traced the folk tale's evolutionary tree and found links with similar stories as far away as China, Japan and Korea.

Just as humans and chimpanzees share an ancient ancestor, all these tales arose from a common source, experts believe".

(Click the link at the top of this posting to read the rest of the story.)

[Wizard of Oz]

.. call it science or not I still can't accept that in the whole human sphere of experience and given the shared experiences of so many cultures that they can decide that one person came up with the idea of the LRRH concept .. for me this doesn't just apply to this story but to a whole range of "who-did-it-first" scenarios .. we are told that all races share an equal intelligence so to me it is common sense that given the same raw materials with the same survival needs that similar solutions would be found independently .. in similar fashion with communities wishing to impart the same messages to their community it is reasonable that the same theme would appear independently in diverse communities .. with as outlined in the article changes in the characters to suit the local situation .. I refuse to believe that ultimately some scientist will be able to say that a particular tribe in a particular place should get all the royalties for LRRH as they wrote .. they can't even decide if Shakespeare wrote all that he is credited with !!! .. and he was only dishing up old ideas ..

.. no I can't accept this as science .. just another OCD geek with a pet idea ..

WoZ unimpressed