Orality and Oral Traditions and their Significance for Archaelogy

Oral traditions or dialogic tradition is transmission of knowledge, ideas, art, customs, from one generation to another in effort to preserve the past through vocal utterance for millennia prior to the invention of writing. Religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Catholicism have used oral traditions along with writing system to transmit their hymn, poems, rituals, mythologies, folk stories to future generations. Until about 4000 BCE, all literature was transmitted orally then writings developed in Egypt and the Mesopotamian civilizations.