The Origin of Storytelling
When prehistoric humans lifted their eyes to the night sky and beheld the stars, their mystery inspired some of the earliest known stories to be told. When we study the signs of the zodiac, their history reveals a primal relationship between storytelling and stars. Even though many associate the western zodiac with ancient Greece, these star signs come from the Mesopotamians, who in turn recieved them from the Sumerians. Incredibly, a cave painting in Lascaux, France depicts the constellation Taurus in its proper position between Orion's belt and the Pleiadian star cluster. Carbon dating determines the paintings in the Lascaux cave complex to be around 17,000 years old. This suggests that astrology is an unbroken transmission of cultural knowledge reaching all the way back to the late Paleolithic Era. Our ancestors used the power of storytelling to immortalize mythic characters in the heavens to serve as guides for themselves and their legacy. And thus began the magical history of storytelling.
image source: newyorkupstate.com
The simple act of naming the stars expanded the consciousness of ancient man beyond a single lifetime into a grand story crossing many generations. The stars became an unchanging reference point that all humans could use to remember their shared history during a time of purely oral traditions. Oral histories are a method of passing information by word of mouth—using storytelling as a memory technique to prevent knowledge from being lost beneath the sands of time.
Even if an ancient person had only known their grandfather’s bones, they knew that he had seen the same figures in the sky that they did. This astrology bound the lineage together—granting a shared identity and understanding of the past. These powerful, culturally defining stories are called origin myths, and they served as foundational systems of thought for civilizations all over the world.
The wheel of the zodiac provided a context to the theater of life itself, defining time and space as a vast cosmic stage that every human acted upon. Upon this stage, the art of storytelling was cultivated, giving ancient people a mythic narrative of who they were and where they came from. Secure within that mental framework, humans could draw inspiration from past legends to imagine the kind of people they wished to become in the future. Truly, history began on the day the world’s first storyteller was born.
Writing and Storytelling Made Civilization Possible
Human memory is fallible, and the desire to preserve the culture and histories of a tribe made it necessary to invent the most important “characters” of all—the letters of the alphabet. Many ancient writing systems were pictorial, meaning they were drawn representations of what the person was speaking about. Eventually, these characters were refined into the phonetic alphabet used today. Modern English letters once represented pictures; “A” was an ox, “B” was a house, and “G” represented the neck of a Camel in the Phoenician alphabet.
The importance of writing skills, and the opportunity it gave advanced civilizations to develop, cannot be understated. The connections that the written word has to key aspects of civilization itself can be found when we study the Egyptian God of writing: Thoth
"Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe... In the later history of ancient Egypt, Thoth became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead."
-Wikipedia.org
The Mythical qualities Egyptians attributed to Thoth reveal the essential connection writing shares with law, science, justice, and mathematics. Because records could be kept through systems of writing, arguments could be settled, justice could be fairly dealt, and the knowledge of science and mathematics could expand. With the help of mathematics, astronomy was developed, and once again humanity looked towards the stars.
Celestial navigation provided merchant ships with a way to safely travel to undiscovered places, exchange knowledge, and engage in commerce. During the age of exploration, mariners returned to their homelands with stories of foreign cultures, exotic animals, and cargo holds filled with strange foods (such as the tomato) that no one in the Eastern Hemisphere had ever tasted before. The incredible stories these explorers shared, inspired others to map the uncharted seas.
At each and every step, the advancement of human civilization coincided with the ability to communicate and express ourselves to one another in more subtle and complex ways. Stories are the irreducible foundation of human communication; a beginning, middle, and end that must be present to express change. What is being discussed? What happened? And what is the result? Oral traditions lead to the written word. Handwritten books lead to the development of the printing press. The printing press allowed the spread of information needed for the public to master arts such as painting, live performance, and music. Literature, performance art, and music all found synthesis in the art of motion pictures and television.
The science of computing was pioneered by creating a language that machines could understand, and the invention of the internet allowed humans all over the world to communicate with one another. One of the oldest websites on the internet is the internet movie database, which existed before web browsers were even invented. From the first moment global communication became a reality, human beings used it to share and discuss stories with each other.
When You Wish Upon a Star
A poetic connection between stories and stars is mirrored in movie culture today. Actors who bring these movie scripts to life are called “Hollywood stars,” and people who make considerable contributions to writing, TV, radio, and film are eligible to receive an honorific star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In modern day moviemaking, we elevate a small number of people to “stardom,” and cast them over and over in many different films. The importance that stories have in our lives cause us to compare celebrities to stars in heaven. Not everyone can have “Star Power,” but the true number of stars in the sky are so numerous they cannot be counted.
The star is a hope, a dream—and travel to distant star systems remains a fantasy that humanity wishes to make real. Yet at its most fundamental level, a star is a fire, a furnace, a cosmic power plant. Until recently, whether someone became a star or not was largely governed by executives in Hollywood. This is simply because they have the necessary resources to enable stars to shine. Emerging technologies, however, are empowering more and more creators to rise to stardom and escape the gravity of their economic situation. With the power of digital storytelling, it makes no difference who you are, because people from all over the planet can join together to make their wishes come true.
The Lone Wolf Dies, But The Pack Survives
From our tribal beginnings to the splendor of modern civilization, the natural state of the human species is one of collaboration. Our collective nature is similar to a pack of wolves, hunting as a team to survive. When each member contributes their talent to the whole, work is made easier, and the community prospers beyond what an individual could achieve by themselves. Yet the day to day reality of many artists is one of hard work in isolation—like a wolf hunting all alone. Writing requires considerable time and resources, with no guarantee that these efforts will ever be rewarded. As a lonely, hungry wolf risks injury and death pursuing its prey for miles through the mountain snow, the writer imperils their livelihood and proverbially joins this wolf as a starving artist; trudging towards their dreams in the cold. Burdened with the challenges of the creative process, and the left-brain practicalities of business, many writers are forced to sacrifice their creative vision for a more secure and less fulfilling occupation.
We live in a world full of passionate creators with incredible stories to share, but even with self-publishing and crowdfunding technologies, most of them lack the resources they need to make their production a success. This may be due to the fact that there is no technologically advanced ecosystem enabling creators to maintain their independence, and work with a supportive community at the same time.
This is where StarScript comes in...
A Revolution in Storytelling
Just as the sun rises each day, and the moon goes through phases each month, the constellations themselves follow a cyclical movement around the night sky called the procession of the equinox. As we reach the end of the Age of Pisces, and move into the Age of Aquarius, it is only natural that the way humanity approaches the art of storytelling experiences a revolution as well.
Starscript is not just another writing website, social media network, or crowdfunding platform—StarScript intends to revolutionize the very way stories are created and experienced, from dream to distribution. It is doing this by developing an interactive social crowdfunding application that is specifically focused on story production; StarScript Legends. With its social production tools and business automation features, the Legends app is set to create a worldbuilding ecosystem that will offer creators the ability to earn money by creating stories as a comprehensive solution to their current economic challenges.
We have a saying in StarScript, that every story can become a star. The StarScript Legends platform will be equipped with a galaxy GUI where each star represents an original story. A star's (story's) position, size, and color within the galaxy GUI will all be influenced by the number of patrons, creators, reviews, and funding the story has. So in this way, StarScript Legends will host a galaxy of multimedia stories for fans to explore and experience. StarScript is set to evolve the long reigning tradition that weaves stories and stars into a full spectrum experiential environment.
The art of storytelling, is the power of free will itself. In our legends and chronicles we learn from our past. With interactive storytelling, our dreams will author our future. Become a StarScript Legends backer today, and be one of the first to leave your mark on the next page of storytelling history.
Barnaby Gallagher, Community Curator
StarScript Profile
09/01/2018
The Origin of Storytelling
When prehistoric humans lifted their eyes to the night sky and beheld the stars, their mystery inspired some of the earliest known stories to be told. When we study the signs of the zodiac, their history reveals a primal relationship between storytelling and stars. Even though many associate the western zodiac with ancient Greece, these star signs come from the Mesopotamians, who in turn recieved them from the Sumerians. Incredibly, a cave painting in Lascaux, France depicts the constellation Taurus in its proper position between Orion's belt and the Pleiadian star cluster. Carbon dating determines the paintings in the Lascaux cave complex to be around 17,000 years old. This suggests that astrology is an unbroken transmission of cultural knowledge reaching all the way back to the late Paleolithic Era. Our ancestors used the power of storytelling to immortalize mythic characters in the heavens to serve as guides for themselves and their legacy. And thus began the magical history of storytelling.
image source: newyorkupstate.com
The simple act of naming the stars expanded the consciousness of ancient man beyond a single lifetime into a grand story crossing many generations. The stars became an unchanging reference point that all humans could use to remember their shared history during a time of purely oral traditions. Oral histories are a method of passing information by word of mouth—using storytelling as a memory technique to prevent knowledge from being lost beneath the sands of time.
Even if an ancient person had only known their grandfather’s bones, they knew that he had seen the same figures in the sky that they did. This astrology bound the lineage together—granting a shared identity and understanding of the past. These powerful, culturally defining stories are called origin myths, and they served as foundational systems of thought for civilizations all over the world.
The wheel of the zodiac provided a context to the theater of life itself, defining time and space as a vast cosmic stage that every human acted upon. Upon this stage, the art of storytelling was cultivated, giving ancient people a mythic narrative of who they were and where they came from. Secure within that mental framework, humans could draw inspiration from past legends to imagine the kind of people they wished to become in the future. Truly, history began on the day the world’s first storyteller was born.
Writing and Storytelling Made Civilization Possible
Human memory is fallible, and the desire to preserve the culture and histories of a tribe made it necessary to invent the most important “characters” of all—the letters of the alphabet. Many ancient writing systems were pictorial, meaning they were drawn representations of what the person was speaking about. Eventually, these characters were refined into the phonetic alphabet used today. Modern English letters once represented pictures; “A” was an ox, “B” was a house, and “G” represented the neck of a Camel in the Phoenician alphabet.
The importance of writing skills, and the opportunity it gave advanced civilizations to develop, cannot be understated. The connections that the written word has to key aspects of civilization itself can be found when we study the Egyptian God of writing: Thoth
"Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe... In the later history of ancient Egypt, Thoth became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science, and the judgment of the dead."
-Wikipedia.org
The Mythical qualities Egyptians attributed to Thoth reveal the essential connection writing shares with law, science, justice, and mathematics. Because records could be kept through systems of writing, arguments could be settled, justice could be fairly dealt, and the knowledge of science and mathematics could expand. With the help of mathematics, astronomy was developed, and once again humanity looked towards the stars.
Celestial navigation provided merchant ships with a way to safely travel to undiscovered places, exchange knowledge, and engage in commerce. During the age of exploration, mariners returned to their homelands with stories of foreign cultures, exotic animals, and cargo holds filled with strange foods (such as the tomato) that no one in the Eastern Hemisphere had ever tasted before. The incredible stories these explorers shared, inspired others to map the uncharted seas.
At each and every step, the advancement of human civilization coincided with the ability to communicate and express ourselves to one another in more subtle and complex ways. Stories are the irreducible foundation of human communication; a beginning, middle, and end that must be present to express change. What is being discussed? What happened? And what is the result? Oral traditions lead to the written word. Handwritten books lead to the development of the printing press. The printing press allowed the spread of information needed for the public to master arts such as painting, live performance, and music. Literature, performance art, and music all found synthesis in the art of motion pictures and television.
The science of computing was pioneered by creating a language that machines could understand, and the invention of the internet allowed humans all over the world to communicate with one another. One of the oldest websites on the internet is the internet movie database, which existed before web browsers were even invented. From the first moment global communication became a reality, human beings used it to share and discuss stories with each other.
When You Wish Upon a Star
A poetic connection between stories and stars is mirrored in movie culture today. Actors who bring these movie scripts to life are called “Hollywood stars,” and people who make considerable contributions to writing, TV, radio, and film are eligible to receive an honorific star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In modern day moviemaking, we elevate a small number of people to “stardom,” and cast them over and over in many different films. The importance that stories have in our lives cause us to compare celebrities to stars in heaven. Not everyone can have “Star Power,” but the true number of stars in the sky are so numerous they cannot be counted.
The star is a hope, a dream—and travel to distant star systems remains a fantasy that humanity wishes to make real. Yet at its most fundamental level, a star is a fire, a furnace, a cosmic power plant. Until recently, whether someone became a star or not was largely governed by executives in Hollywood. This is simply because they have the necessary resources to enable stars to shine. Emerging technologies, however, are empowering more and more creators to rise to stardom and escape the gravity of their economic situation. With the power of digital storytelling, it makes no difference who you are, because people from all over the planet can join together to make their wishes come true.
The Lone Wolf Dies, But The Pack Survives
From our tribal beginnings to the splendor of modern civilization, the natural state of the human species is one of collaboration. Our collective nature is similar to a pack of wolves, hunting as a team to survive. When each member contributes their talent to the whole, work is made easier, and the community prospers beyond what an individual could achieve by themselves. Yet the day to day reality of many artists is one of hard work in isolation—like a wolf hunting all alone. Writing requires considerable time and resources, with no guarantee that these efforts will ever be rewarded. As a lonely, hungry wolf risks injury and death pursuing its prey for miles through the mountain snow, the writer imperils their livelihood and proverbially joins this wolf as a starving artist; trudging towards their dreams in the cold. Burdened with the challenges of the creative process, and the left-brain practicalities of business, many writers are forced to sacrifice their creative vision for a more secure and less fulfilling occupation.
We live in a world full of passionate creators with incredible stories to share, but even with self-publishing and crowdfunding technologies, most of them lack the resources they need to make their production a success. This may be due to the fact that there is no technologically advanced ecosystem enabling creators to maintain their independence, and work with a supportive community at the same time.
This is where StarScript comes in...
A Revolution in Storytelling
Just as the sun rises each day, and the moon goes through phases each month, the constellations themselves follow a cyclical movement around the night sky called the procession of the equinox. As we reach the end of the Age of Pisces, and move into the Age of Aquarius, it is only natural that the way humanity approaches the art of storytelling experiences a revolution as well.
Starscript is not just another writing website, social media network, or crowdfunding platform—StarScript intends to revolutionize the very way stories are created and experienced, from dream to distribution. It is doing this by developing an interactive social crowdfunding application that is specifically focused on story production; StarScript Legends. With its social production tools and business automation features, the Legends app is set to create a worldbuilding ecosystem that will offer creators the ability to earn money by creating stories as a comprehensive solution to their current economic challenges.
We have a saying in StarScript, that every story can become a star. The StarScript Legends platform will be equipped with a galaxy GUI where each star represents an original story. A star's (story's) position, size, and color within the galaxy GUI will all be influenced by the number of patrons, creators, reviews, and funding the story has. So in this way, StarScript Legends will host a galaxy of multimedia stories for fans to explore and experience. StarScript is set to evolve the long reigning tradition that weaves stories and stars into a full spectrum experiential environment.
The art of storytelling, is the power of free will itself. In our legends and chronicles we learn from our past. With interactive storytelling, our dreams will author our future. Become a StarScript Legends backer today, and be one of the first to leave your mark on the next page of storytelling history.
Barnaby Gallagher, Community Curator
StarScript Profile
09/01/2018
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