Notes for a general preface

It’s been suggested that telling stories is what made us human. We devote a huge proportion of our lives to enjoying fictions.  Novels, films, soaps, and before that travelling storytellers.  Perhaps this has been so since the dawn of our species, and is what made our remote ancestors special. Perhaps creating fictions conferred the ability to explore scenarios verbally, so that trial and error took place, so far as possible, around the campfire, not out on the perilous savannah. 

That's a draft of the first paragraph.  I'm working on the rest, and it looks as if it will come under the following headings

• About myths
• On the oral tradition that preceded the written accounts we have
• In retelling an old tale, how far can you stray from the original?
• What do we say about unwelcome messages that may be contained in some of these stories?
• Maybe some suggestions for how the stories, and the prefaces, can be used.