Probably because they were some of the only ones to remain almost entirely isolated from the rest of the world while civilization was happening elsewhere. They never developed writing. The rest of the word was quite likely very similar to them before writing.
The article mentions that because we have invented writing, passing down oral traditions became much less important to us, and hence our societies have "lost" some of the old tales, paradoxically. That's because while people write down things they think is important, they couldn't have known that unlike oral information (which adapts as language evolves, imperfectly but enough to keep the basic structure of the original), the means on which they write decay rapidly, and due to the speed at which language evolves (without modern technology, a few hundred years is enough for isolated regions to develop their own language branches), much of what was written in the distant past would become unintelligible even to people living in the area, even if it managed to survive (though modern techniques using computers seem to have made it easier to do so). Not to mention that in much of the world, civilizations were constantly being replaced by newer ones or migrating to different areas as their neighbors expanded and faded. Much of the ancient texts in any given area would make no sense to the new inhabitants, who would have no qualms about destroying everything (in fact, they probably burned everything down as soon as they conquered a new area).
Basically, the written word turned out to be much less resilient than people probably believed it would be. I think we are making the same mistake with digital information. It may look "eternal" but try to find websites from the early internet, for example. Almost everything is disappearing quickly.
>Probably because they were some of the only ones to remain almost entirely isolated from the rest of the world while civilization was happening elsewhere.
and, migrating farthest from Africa (can tell by red-shift :) they git the oldest branch of our oldest stories
The article mentions that because we have invented writing, passing down oral traditions became much less important to us, and hence our societies have "lost" some of the old tales, paradoxically. That's because while people write down things they think is important, they couldn't have known that unlike oral information (which adapts as language evolves, imperfectly but enough to keep the basic structure of the original), the means on which they write decay rapidly, and due to the speed at which language evolves (without modern technology, a few hundred years is enough for isolated regions to develop their own language branches), much of what was written in the distant past would become unintelligible even to people living in the area, even if it managed to survive (though modern techniques using computers seem to have made it easier to do so). Not to mention that in much of the world, civilizations were constantly being replaced by newer ones or migrating to different areas as their neighbors expanded and faded. Much of the ancient texts in any given area would make no sense to the new inhabitants, who would have no qualms about destroying everything (in fact, they probably burned everything down as soon as they conquered a new area).
Basically, the written word turned out to be much less resilient than people probably believed it would be. I think we are making the same mistake with digital information. It may look "eternal" but try to find websites from the early internet, for example. Almost everything is disappearing quickly.