*Department of Anthropology and Centre for the Coevolution of Biology and
Culture, Durham University, Science Site, South Road, Durham, United Kingdom

Full text: http://tinyurl.com/q7sn9jk

Media coverage:

http://tinyurl.com/mkwl9vt
http://tinyurl.com/ndpoyux
http://tinyurl.com/omtm4ql

Abstract:

Researchers have long been fascinated by the strong continuities evident in
the oral traditions associated with different cultures. According to the
'historic-geographic' school, it is possible to classify similar tales into
"international types" and trace them back to their original archetypes.
However, critics argue that folktale traditions are fundamentally fluid, and
that most international types are artificial constructs. Here, these issues
are addressed using phylogenetic methods that were originally developed to
reconstruct evolutionary relationships among biological species, and which
have been recently applied to a range of cultural phenomena. The study
focuses on one of the most debated international types in the literature:
ATU 333, 'Little Red Riding Hood'. A number of variants of ATU 333 have been
recorded in European oral traditions, and it has been suggested that the
group may include tales from other regions, including Africa and East Asia.
However, in many of these cases, it is difficult to differentiate ATU 333
from another widespread international folktale, ATU 123, 'The Wolf and the
Kids'. To shed more light on these relationships, data on 58 folktales were
analysed using cladistic, Bayesian and phylogenetic network-based methods.
The results demonstrate that, contrary to the claims made by critics of the
historic-geographic approach, it is possible to identify ATU 333 and ATU 123
as distinct international types. They further suggest that most of the
African tales can be classified as variants of ATU 123, while the East Asian
tales probably evolved by blending together elements of both ATU 333 and ATU
123. These findings demonstrate that phylogenetic methods provide a powerful
set of tools for testing hypotheses about cross-cultural relationships among
folktales, and point towards exciting new directions for research into the
transmission and evolution of oral narratives.
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