The Art of Storytelling: How Poetry Has Preserved History for Centuries

In Honor of National Poetry Month

In the beginning, well, who knows what life was like, but we have been told lots of versions of all of that - let there be light and then Adam and Eve appear or there was the big bang and then all sorts of little one-celled creatures formed and eventually bigger and more complex creatures and somewhere along the line, humans of various species and colors and abilities. One thing we know for sure is that communication has been evolving, starting with perhaps grunts and growls and roars and chatter and perhaps songs from winged creatures.

Public Domain, Cave Painting Lascaux, France

Cave Paintings

Somewhere along the way, 40 or 50,000 years ago, in what is now France and Spain, some folks took to blowing ashes around their outstretched hands on the walls of caves, revealing those hands, as if to say, “I was here.” What is more poetic than that wordless enigmatic gesture? And some folks began drawing images of humans and images of animals and images of humans hunting animals. And what are these if not simple poems, simple stories? The need to say, “I was here,” and the need to tell one’s story, to convey one’s experience, has been a human drive for millennia. We are here, we want to tell you how terrifying it was and how some of us died hunting that enormous saber toothed tiger. Maybe we needed those drawings to show the younger hunters what we encountered so they could be prepared for a similar struggle. We want you to know what it’s like to grow crops so that we have food and don’t always have to hunt to eat. We want you to know that we worked hard. We want to communicate those adventures and triumphs struggles, and the whys and hows of those endeavors. And without language, these drawings told the stories, as visual poetry. This is storytelling at its most basic and it began tens of thousands of years ago — before there was language, before there were books or paper or pens or smart phones. This is poetry, this is storytelling, this is testament to one’s existence, to truth, beauty, and the perpetual struggle to give shape to what it means to be human. These images told of life for our cave dwelling ancestors in poetry.

And if giving voice to experiences and emotions for which we have no words is poetry, then these enigmatic hands encircled by ash are poetry in its purest form. Poetry is expression that expresses what we might struggle to express in more formal uses of language — those depths of emotion or the raw power of emotion are communicated in poetry, from an ancient ash encircled image of a hand to haiku to rap. Defining poetry is as elusive as the art form itself.

Seeing those images, those simple “stories,” tells us so much about life for those early humans. Those images are bright beautiful windows into their lives. Seeing them is to be connected, via their simple poetic essence, to these people who were so different and so similar to us. We see in those images the need to communicate, the need to explain, we see triumph and struggle and creativity. Stories, even the simplest of stories, matter — they always have. These stories, these poems, inform, instruct, inspire, and in the simplest ways, testify to our lives on this planet.

History Chip is your cave wall!

Consider History Chip as your cave wall to tell your story, your struggles, successes, your journeys, your everyday comings and goings. At History Chip, your stories of real life, the poetry of your experiences, testify to your existence — they say, “I was here.” But more than that, let’s reflect back to those 50,000 year old paintings in the caves in France and Spain. They give us an understanding of what life was like for those people, in those places. Evidence from other places and times will inform us about what life was like for other people in other places. From that we can get a broader view of life on the planet at other times last week or well in our past. Similarly, when we have stories from, say, the 1940s, those stories will be very different in different parts of the world. Life in the concentration camp in Dachau will be very different from life in an apartment building in New York City or in a small village in South Africa. And these stories side by side inform us of the breadth of stories of life in the 1940s fully with the inclusion of all of our voices all of our poetry.

And consider the “Star Spangled Banner,” “La Marseillaise,” Rap music, nursery rhymes, Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” every rousing marching song, sea shanties, work songs from the cotton fields, “Strange Fruit,” it’s all poetry. All efforts to communicate the profound, silly, profane and beautiful nature of human existence. Some grand, some simple and they all reach across human to human for connection and communication.

We await your poetry in whatever form you choose to make it. Your story matters!