The earliest humans were, for many reasons, ill-equipped for survival. While living in trees our primate ancestors evolved a suite of physical attributes: superior climbing skills, binocular color vision, big brains, and grasping hands and feet. In addition, they clustered in tribal bands—an evolutionary trend that had emerged among many species, including ants and bees, millions of years earlier and was responsible for what Edward Wilson (2013) describes as “the social conquest of earth.” Proliferation of primates following the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago brought the total primate species to more than two hundred, with population numbers sufficient for long-term survival. But these advantages were much reduced for the few species that ventured out of the safety of their treetop world. Efficient bipedal locomotion that had developed around four million years BP freed up the forelimbs, thus allowing for new means of procuring food, carrying things, making handicrafts, and tool use, but the earliest humans were otherwise vulnerable in many ways. Ground-dwelling predators were bigger and faster while hominids lacked effective fangs, claws, horns, and hooves.

Despite these physical limitations, the brain size of hominids more than doubled over the past three million years and the last surviving species, Homo sapiens, eventually rose to become the most powerful species on Earth. Cognitive skills, language, and particularly the nebulous faculty of imagination were instrumental, although dating the ways these combined to create power over environmental hazards is virtually impossible. We can trace the growing power of mind, language, and imagination in the historical period through written records, but how these human skills originally came together in prehistoric times requires guesswork and inference. Nevertheless, what we know of prehistoric worldviews, common ritual patterns, and mythology indicates that power, both personal and tribal, emerged within a new reality created by language and imagination and shaped by narrative. Tribal lore concerning the surrounding world, recollection of whatever history could be remembered, and action to be taken in crucial situations—all these were embodied in narrative, in stories told and retold down the generations. The tenuous relation between mythic stories and historical fact is obvious from even the most superficial reading of familiar mythologies. We simply cannot discover any reliable account of history from mythic narrative.