{"id":157,"date":"2009-09-05T22:28:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-06T02:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/?p=157"},"modified":"2009-09-06T12:24:30","modified_gmt":"2009-09-06T16:24:30","slug":"biologists-weigh-in-on-fairy-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/2009\/09\/05\/biologists-weigh-in-on-fairy-tales\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Fairy Tales Go Back to 600 BC?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-thumbnail wp-image-158\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/tatar\/files\/2009\/09\/goblered-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"goblered\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/science-news\/6142964\/Fairy-tales-have-ancient-origin.html<\/p>\n<p>The Telegraph reports that Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, claims that versions of &#8220;Little Red Riding Hood&#8221; have a &#8220;common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.&#8221;  Tehrani will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival.<\/p>\n<p>T<em>he original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The Wolf and    the Kids, in which a wolf pretends to be a nanny goat to gain entry to a    house full of young goats. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> Stories in Africa are closely related to this original tale, whilst stories    from Japan, Korea, China and Burma form a sister group. Tales told in Iran    and Nigeria were the closest relations of the modern European version.<br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> Perrault\u2019s French version was retold by the Brothers Grimm in the 19th    century. Dr Tehrani said: \u201cWe don\u2019t know very much about the processes of    transmission of these stories from culture to culture, but it is possible    that they may being passed along trade routes or with the movement of    people.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Yes, it is a challenge to identify exactly how the tales were transmitted, but I can&#8217;t help wondering if Tehrani has read Alan Dundes on &#8220;Little Red Riding Hood&#8221; and whether he has consulted the work of folklorists, most of whom never embraced the view that Perrault &#8220;invented&#8221; the figure of Little Red Riding Hood. Here&#8217;s hoping that the lecture will appear in print soon.<\/p>\n<p>Below is a link to Jamie Tehrani&#8217;s home page at Durham University.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.dur.ac.uk\/anthropology\/staff\/profile\/?id=5388<\/p>\n<p><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/science-news\/6142964\/Fairy-tales-have-ancient-origin.html The Telegraph reports that Jamie Tehrani, a cultural anthropologist at Durham University, claims that versions of &#8220;Little Red Riding Hood&#8221; have a &#8220;common ancestor dating back more than 2,600 years.&#8221; Tehrani will present his work on Tuesday at the British Science Festival. The original ancestor is thought to be similar to another tale, The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2125,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/tatar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}