Scientists study evolution of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’
“Little Red Riding Hood” may have been heading to her grandmother’s house — but anthropologists wanted to know where she came from and just how her story spread.
By applying a mathematical model more commonly used by biologists to study the evolution of species, the researchers were able to create a sort of “evolutionary tree” for the popular folk tale, according to a new study out Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The project, led by Jamie Tehrani, an anthropologist at Durham University, England, was able to show that ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ shares a common but ancient root with another popular international folk tale ‘The Wolf and the Kids.’”
“This is rather like a biologist showing that humans and other apes share a common ancestor but have evolved into distinct species,” Tehrani said.
“The Wolf and the Kids,” which tells of a wolf that impersonates a nanny goat and eats her kids, apparently came first, originating in the 1st century AD. It is popular in Europe and the Middle East.
“Little Red Riding Hood,” in which the big, bad wolf eats a little girl after disguising himself as her grandmother, diverged 1,000 years later.
The tale was one told by Germany’s Brothers Grimm in the 1800s, but its roots trace back to oral stories passed down in France, Austria and northern Italy, Tehrani found.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/13/scientists-study-evolution-of-little-red-riding-hood/
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