Sayings,
Proverbs & Aphorisms
Spreekwoorden
en spreuken •
Sprichwörter und Sinnsprüche
 n predominantly illiterate societies, memorization skills were (and are) considered
particularly important. Story telling and singing are closely linked,
since early
tales were chanted in verse form to make them easier to memorize. Ancestral
wisdom tended to be handed down in brief chunks of text that were easy
to say and easy to remember, all the better if they rhymed or had some
other type of recognizable structure. Some people memorized large numbers
of such sayings over their lifetimes and did their best to pass them
down. This is how some sayings were inherited orally for centuries before
they were written down.
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