What Is the Oldest Story in the World?

The story of the Shipwrecked Sailor may be the world's oldest high-seas adventure—and it's also one of the earliest examples of a "story-within-a-story," in which the main narrative is recounted by a character within the tale itself. The story was written down during Egypt's Middle Kingdom, and only one copy survives on an ancient papyrus. But experts think it was widely known at the time, in part because its language and structure seem tailored for a wide audience.

The story begins with an expedition leader who fears that Egypt’s pharaoh will execute him for failing his mission. To comfort him, an attendant recounts his own extraordinary survival under dire circumstances. The attendant had been a sailor whose ship was wrecked in a storm, leaving him as the sole survivor on a remote island. There, he encounters the island's ruler, a gigantic, gold-covered serpent who cares for the sailor until a ship arrives several months later to rescue him.

Parts of this Akkadian epic poem appear in many cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia, and the poem is based on several stories written in Sumerian hundreds of years earlier. Scholars have surviving copies of both the Akkadian epic and the Sumerian tales on which it was based, says Joshua Jeffers of the University of Pennsylvania and the Penn Museum. "The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the most widely spread stories throughout the ancient Near East," he says.

The epic relates the adventures of Gilgamesh, a mythical king of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk, and his "wild-man" sidekick Enkidu. Gilgamesh is plunged into despair when Enkidu dies, prompting him to embark on a quest for immortality so that he will not die himself.

Eventually, Gilgamesh meets a man named Utnapishtim, who says he was granted immortality after building a giant boat to survive a great flood sent by the gods to destroy humanity—a clear parallel to the biblical story of Noah and the flood in Genesis.

Jeffers thinks the writers of the Bible heard the Epic of Gilgamesh when many Jews were exiled to Babylon in the sixth century B.C. although some scholars argue that ancient Israel and Judah were exposed to Mesopotamian traditions long before that.

The Brothers Grimm, writing in German, published a version of this folktale in the first edition of their famous collection in 1812, but it was removed in later editions because it was thought too similar to another story. Researchers have suggested, however, that the origins of the story are much older. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that versions of the tale may date back to the Bronze Age, when Proto-Indo-European-speaking populations lived on the steppes of Eastern Europe roughly 6,000 years ago.

In the Brothers Grimm version, a poor blacksmith makes a bargain with the Devil for wealth and unparalleled metalworking abilities, but when the Devil (or Death, in pre-Christian versions) comes to claim his soul, the smith tricks him with several magical items until he renounces the deal.

When the story originated, however, iron smelting had not yet been developed, so the smith would have worked in bronze—a "red" smith or a "yellow" smith, rather than a blacksmith. Researchers suggest that this distinction may reflect the tale’s ancient origins. While working with iron was commonplace in 19th-century Europe, advanced bronze-working techniques may have seemed extraordinary or even magical to Bronze Age communities.

This oral folktale, part of the Dreaming traditions of the Gunditjmara people of southern Australia, describes a fiery spirit emerging from the ground as three pillars of smoke, fire and molten rock. The story may preserve memories of the volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Budj Bim (also known as Mount Eccles) about 37,000 years ago, which helped shape the basalt landscape visible today.

The Gunditjmara story describes an ancestral being named Budj Bim (“High Head”) spewing lava and fire from his mouth. The mountain is said to be the ancestral being’s body, while the surrounding volcanic landscape reflects his transformation. Some researchers suggest that the tradition may be among the oldest surviving oral accounts of a volcanic eruption, although its precise age cannot be established. The story also links the eruption to the intricate landscape of cooled lava flows now found in the area.

The story of the Seven Sisters may be humanity’s oldest surviving narrative. Similar versions of it are found throughout the world, including in Europe, Australia and among Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Some researchers have argued that the core narrative may date back to Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) oral traditions 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

The story offers an explanation for two of the most prominent star patterns in the night sky: the sisters themselves, usually seven in number, who are represented by the Pleiades star cluster, and a hunter who pursues them, identified in Western traditions as Orion and represented in the sky as the constellation of Orion. In many versions, one of the sisters hides, dies or is captured during the chase, explaining why fewer than seven stars are often visible in the Pleiades. The cluster contains more than 1,000 stars, but typically only six or seven are visible to the naked eye.

Astronomer E.C. Krupp, former director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and author of “Echoes of the Ancient Skies” (1983), cautions that the age of the Seven Sisters story is uncertain. But proponents argue it dates back to humanity's early origins in Africa.