Imaginary Cavemen Exchanging stories

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 still 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.