Ever since mankind became imaginative, storytellers have been  explaining everything people encountered, whether or not it was true. These storytellers are modern humans most influential people.

© 1999 - 2002 Donald L. Hamilton

Human Imagination has given mankind the unique ability to communicate abstract concepts and ideas among its people. It has given its storytellers the power to emotionally enter people's minds. These storyteller's have the ability to create happiness or hatred or any other emotion humans may possess. Their ability to persuade make tham one of the most powerful groups among the "Homo Imaginative Sapiens" species.

Ever since mankind had evolved a brain capable comprehending abstract ideas, along with an extremely powerful creative imagination, people have from generation to generation gradually created more complex cultures as they progressed. Their highly sophisticated talking apparatus in their throats plus this powerful new imagination enabled them to create many complex vocal sounds that they could associate with everything they encountered in everyday life, even the mysterious things they encountered but did not understand.

They connected these vocal sounds into a series of sounds that became crude sentences. Languages were created. This allowed them to convey more complex and sophisticated ideas to one another. Eventually, the sentences became a language, the language of a particular family or tribe. There are thousands of different languages and dialects in the world today.

People used this crude language to convey everyday deeds and ideas to one another. Some imaginative people in the tribe began using the words to tell stories of events that happened to them, perhaps on a hunt or some other incident. They discovered that if they used their imagination they could embellish their stories with fanciful fabrications. This gave them a sense of power. By telling stories they soon realized that they could influence the other people to do their bidding, either good or bad. They could dominate other people just by their storytelling. They could frighten them with their stories. These people have evolved into our storytellers, mankind's most influential and powerful people.

As languages became more sophisticated and complex, people's imagination began to aggrandize. Its hard to imagine imagining without having a language to use. Our imagination works best when it is stimulated by challenges - adversity, exigencies, beauty, new ideas, etc. Its power multiplies when it interacts with other “imaginative minds”. The power of our imagination depends upon the sophistication of the society we live in. The more words we have at our disposal the better our imagination will work.

Words are mental pictures we have learned to associate in our imagination with specific things and ideas, either by vocal sounds, writing, or signs (hand). They are one of mankind’s most vital tools.

Early storytellers told of great encounters they had with animals and other tribes whether it was true or imaginary. The early artists tried to tell their stories by painting pictures on the cave walls or rocks. They told of encounters with their ancestors, of imaginary adventures. Anything they did not understand they rationalized with a fabricated story.

Eventually some imaginative storytellers invented Gods, a ‘supernatural beings’ that had special powers to control certain phenomena, to explain various things such as thunder and lightning, etc. that they did not understand or was difficult to explain. (Man always has that feeling of a mysterious unknown in the back of his mind.) These stories were passed on from generation to generation, embellished and changed somewhat. They became the great myths of the tribes. The storytellers created myths, superstitions, rituals, morals, traditions, rules, codes, laws, religions, from things that they experienced or imagined in their mind.

Some storytellers, in order to make a greater impression on their audience, even claimed to have talked with their ‘Gods’. This made the storytellers very special people themselves. It gave them a special power, to be able to talk to their ‘Gods’. They became the priests of the tribe. They claimed they received special powers from their ‘Gods’. It elevated them above the other members of the tribe. They now enjoyed a very special standing within the tribe and were able to exert much greater influence on their fellow tribesmen, even to the point of demanding animal and human sacrifices.