The case for protecting and rewilding traditional stories
Awareness of biodiversity and its importance has inspired huge global efforts to protect and preserve the natural environment in recent decades.
Yet today another crucial form of diversity is endangered in multiple ways but rarely, if ever, discussed: our traditional stories and folktales.
This body of knowledge is an essential repository of the collective memory, values, and know-how of cultures around the world, gathered over tens of thousands of years, and demands to be treated with the same urgency in the face of a largely unnoticed disappearance.
At The Scheherazade Foundation we use the term ‘mythodiversity’ (from the Greek mythos – ‘story’, ‘legend’, ‘myth’) to describe the preservation and rewilding of the rich and diverse tapestry of folktales that have shaped human societies for millennia – what the thinker and writer Idries Shah described as ‘an instruction manual for the world’.
Just as biodiversity is essential for the health of ecosystems, mythodiversity is vital for the cultural health of humanity. Yet despite their long and successful pedigree, traditional stories now face many threats, from globalization and digitalization to the loss of languages and generational divides. This article explores why mythodiversity matters, the threats traditional stories face, and the urgent need to protect them as a form of World Intangible Heritage.
The disappearance of stories: a global crisis
Languages are the vessels that carry stories, and the extinction of a language can lead to the loss of entire story traditions. UNESCO studies show that as many as 339 languages have gone extinct since 1900, with 88 of those disappearing in the past quarter of a century. On average, this translates into the loss of between three and four languages per year. Each language is a repository of unique folktales and oral traditions, and with its extinction these stories also vanish.
When a language disappears, its stories go with it
To turn this into figures that might indicate the current scale of story-loss is complex, but a sense of the threat to mythodiversity can be estimated. Dr. Hans-Jörg Uther’s research on European folktales (Europäische Märchen und Sagen, 2003-2004) revealed over 7,000 tales across more than 50 linguistic regions, giving an average of around 140 key stories per language. Extrapolating from this, it is possible to argue that with every language that disappears, roughly 140 traditional stories are placed at risk as well. This would mean that – taking the loss of well over three languages per annum as a given – the world may currently be losing around 500 stories every year. That would mean that since the beginning of the last century, humanity may have lost nearly 50,000 traditional stories, and since 2000, over 12,000 at a rate of almost ten tales per week.
And today, with approximately 3,000 of the world’s 7,000 languages currently endangered, an exponential rise in the disappearance of stories is a real possibility, representing a true catastrophe for human culture and civilisation.
Complex threats to traditional stories
The extinction of languages is just one facet of the broader crisis facing traditional stories, however. Modern society is increasingly moving away from oral traditions in favour of digital storytelling and new forms of media. The rapid urbanization and globalization of cultures, combined with the generational divide and the AI revolution, have diminished the role that folktales play in daily life.
Stories once served a vital role in cultural transmission, particularly through the oral tradition, where knowledge was passed from older generations to the young. This generational exchange is now under threat. Research published in 2018 by Eric Schniter on the Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia demonstrates that storytelling is a specialized skill honed by older adults, particularly grandparents. These older generations are vital cultural knowledge holders, passing down stories that encode practical information, cultural values, and moral teachings. However, as the link between younger generations and their elders and traditional lifestyles becomes weakened, this transmission of knowledge is breaking down, resulting in greater story-loss.
Intangible Cultural Heritage
The role and importance of traditional stories extends far beyond their entertainment value. They are integral to a community’s identity, values, and collective memory. The concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) aims to protect elements of culture that are not physical monuments but are just as important – rituals, music, language, and storytelling traditions.
'Stories are not just entertainment – they are cultural infrastructure.'
The preservation of folktales and stories, such as Cinderella and its many global variants, could be a new frontier in Intangible Cultural Heritage protection. While a small number of ‘keystone’ stories have travelled successfully across linguistic and cultural boundaries, their survival should not obscure a deeper loss. What disappears with the extinction of a language is not merely a narrative outline, but the full story-ecology: the local meanings, symbolic nuances, social functions, and practical wisdom encoded in language and context.
Moreover, even widely known stories such as Cinderella often survive in increasingly standardised (and even sanitised) forms, while hundreds of regionally rooted variants – shaped by specific landscapes, customs, and values – fall silent. In this sense, the global success of a few stories highlights the vulnerability of the many ‘endemic’ tales that cannot migrate beyond their original cultural environments, and which are at greatest risk of disappearing altogether.
Mass global migrations, often brought on by climate change, further compound this issue: as we lose connection to place, we lose connection to the stories that belong to it.
The importance of mythodiversity
Mythodiversity, as a concept, emphasizes the value of preserving the rich array of cultural narratives that have evolved across the world. These stories not only entertain but also provide essential lessons, moral codes, and cultural values. They are vehicles for understanding the human condition, offering a diverse range of solutions to life’s challenges, whether in the form of myths, fables, or folktales.
Just as the loss of species impoverishes the biological ecosystem, the loss of stories impoverishes our cultural ecosystem. Each story that disappears represents a disappearance of accumulated wisdom, a fragment of humanity’s collective experience. Protecting mythodiversity means safeguarding our shared heritage, ensuring that future generations can access the stories that have shaped societies for millennia.
Preserving stories as World Intangible Heritage
We are at a critical juncture. The decade from 2022-2032 has been designated by UNESCO as the Indigenous Languages Decade, a recognition of the importance of preserving endangered languages. This initiative provides a crucial opportunity to expand our focus to include the traditional stories that accompany these languages. However, it will take a concerted effort from global institutions, communities, and individuals to ensure that these stories are not lost to time.
Efforts like the World Story Bank, which aims to protect and rewild traditional stories, are essential to this cause. But we also need broader recognition of the importance of stories in global heritage discussions. Stories like Cinderella – with its hundreds of cultural variants – deserve to be protected just as we protect cultural monuments or natural wonders. By doing so, we honour the richness of human culture and acknowledge the role that these stories play in shaping our identities and values.
Conclusion
The loss of traditional stories and folktales is a ‘silent crisis’, one that has gone unnoticed in the rush of modern life. To our knowledge, this article is the first discussion of the threat to traditional stories as a global crisis. Yet the extinction of these cultural narratives represents a profound loss to humanity. By embracing the concept of mythodiversity and advocating for the protection of traditional stories both individually and collectively as Intangible Cultural Heritage, we can ensure that these stories are preserved for future generations.
The world cannot afford to lose its stories. They are our connection to the past, our guide for the future, and an essential part of what makes us human. It is time for us work together to protect and celebrate mythodiversity, ensuring that the wisdom contained in our cultural heritage is passed on to generations to come.