Human beings are natural story tellers.
It makes sense - if you were good at telling stories and listening you got information which helped you survive.
Stories like this which would help you find food to feed your family:
And stories like this which would help you avoid drinking water which would poison you:
For the above story (which I made up!) the story is about an evil spirit inhabiting a deep pond which would make you sick. The stories didn’t have to be 100% true in many cases to be useful for helping with survival.