What is the oldest myth or parable with an animal talking to people?

I don’t actually know for a fact, but I highly doubt that the snake in the garden of eden was the first. This talking animal thing seems to be very deeply embeded in our minds. Even in modern times, we have talking animals in commercials, kids stories, and even adult stories. From the three little pigs, to the talking frog in Mr. slave’s rectum on south park.

Im guessing, that the egyptians have a few stories with talking animals that will pre-date the bible. More than likely a cat or dog. But it’s just a guess.

Are we talking recorded or all time oldest? Not that we’d be able to tell the latter.

Gilgamesh has a similar snake and predates the Eden myth. I don’t think anyone could have really taken the Gilgamesh story as full-on literal, but I may be wrong.

@incendiary_dan – Recorded all-time oldest.

@laureth – Could there be any pre-Gilgamesh myths with different animals?

Talking animals seem to go back as far as mythology goes back.

In ancient Celtic mythology, written about by Julius Casesar in 51–52 B.C. “Gwyrhr questioned a series of wise animals, each one wiser than the previous, the oldest and wisest of all was the salmon of Llyn Llyw ” Source

In Japanese mythology: “This legend recounts the tale of a talking hare who tricked a group of crocodiles into forming a bridge so he could escape from his island home. After a series of adventures the hare became travelling companion to Oh-kuni-nushi, who soon after married the Princess Inaba and became ruler of the land of Izumo.” This was written down in the Kojiki, which was printed in 722 A.D., but the tale is older.Source

“Two thousand year old Panchatantra contains numerous stories in which the animals have been given prominence. This collection of stories is also the basis for ‘Aesop’s Fables’. Even today, children as well as adults find great excitement in reading these animal stories. Talkative turtle, stupid frog, rat and lion stories are too well known.”
Source

Matt, I would be shocked if there weren’t talking animals for as long as people have told stories. However, many people seem to be sticklers for documentation, and Gilgamesh is one of the oldest, if not the oldest surviving written story (in Western culture, at least).

@laureth Took my answer.

Look to whoever came up with writing first; that’ll be where you find the oldest recorded story of the sort. Whether it’s meant to be literal or figurative depends on the story, I suppose. I don’t rule out the literal interpretation, as someone who understands a bit of animal communication and is interest in inter-species communication.

This is from 100,000 B.C. -

Ugga find snake. Snake hurt. Ugga take snake to cave. Ugga keep snake warm. Ugga feed snake. Ugga make pray for snake. Ugga make snake not hurt. Snake bite Ugga.

Ugga say, Why?

Snake say, Because me snake.

Thanks @marinelife !

And in the Gilgamesh myth: Is the snake the first talking animal? Are the other animals of older parts of the myth?

What about oral traditions which were recorded later? Maybe Native-American myths and their shamans’ concept of animal spirits.

Your friend, Wikipedia, has an interesting entry on the subject of Anthropomorphism

Anyone else get annoyed by the caveman broken English trope?

Animism appears to be a common thread in basically all pre-agricultural socieities, as well as non-agricultural ones to this day. A key feature in animistic beliefs is attributing intelligence to other creatures, animals included. As @laureth said, the tradition is likely as old as storytelling itself. Although oral histories are extremely resilient, and often actually subject to less change over time than histories of literate societies, it’s extremely hard to track how old a particular story is unless it’s tied to some historical event.

Thanks for the link, Zen. How could I have missed this? I was just reading a bit more about animal spirits. It seems that the snake has being used by Native Americans for a very long time. Could it be that their ancestors brought the idea with them from Asia? Same origin as the snake in Gilgamesh? The primordial ur-snake so to speak.

I also wondered about the 100,000 BCE comment. The first modern humans left Africa around 70,000 BCE. Did anthropomorphism originate in Africa then?

@mattbrowne – are you suggesting that the talking animals in myths, particularly snakes, come from the Eden story somehow? Because it might be worth researching how old the Eden myth is. I’m pretty sure it was built on earlier myths, not the other way around.

@laureth – We know that the Eden myth and other Biblical myths were recorded in more recent times compared to Gilgamesh. I wondered what could have happened before Gilgamesh was recorded. Are there primordial myths passed on by oral traditions only. Is there one primordial talking animal? Is there any way to find out. Like interviewing old people from various Native American tribes. Trying to build a tree with mythical animals unique to some tribes and other animals common to many tribes.

I’m going out on a limb here. However, visual art (pictures) predate writing by a long shot. Tens of thousands of years, if not more. And if a culture is making sculptures or amazing cave art, I have to believe that they are telling stories about those animals. We’ll never know for sure what those stories were, but they probably talked amongst themselves, yes?

The oldest animal figurine I’ve come up with is this: a lion-person figure that may have been totemic. The oldest cave art I found was Chauvet cave, from about the same time period. Bird art in Australia is likely older. Also of interest is Lascaux, especially the bulls and the bird-man figure.

Just for the record, I don’t think the creature that spoke to Eve in the Garden was a snake as we know it. The Serpent may have been a beautiful creature before it was cursed.

(Eh, I’m pretty sure the snake/serpent was a later addition to the Eden story. The snake predated the Abrahamic religions as a powerful symbol, which was likely turned on its ear and “cursed” because history is written by the winners, and in this case, the symbol of female power and/or sexual energy was made to be “bad” once JHVH ruled the joint. But I digress.)

@mattbrowne . . . A clue to your interest in the origins of anthropomorphism in relation to early man and the African continent may lie in a children’s book. I read this story many times in third grade and haven’t thought about it since. In fact, I hadn’t thought about it until I read your post above. It’s called Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears and is based on a West African oral tradition.

ugg like. pretty pictures. real page turner.

I would guess it isn’t the snake talking to Eve, b/c as far as I know that is a Christian story, and doesn’t Greek Mythology predate Christianity?

There are tales of gods taking the form of animals and courting humans in Greek mythology… not sure if those tales are the oldest, but just trying to help narrow it down ;)

It isn’t the snake talking to Eve. It’s definitely pre-Christian. As the talking gorilla in Ishmael says, Christian stories were borrowed from pre-agricultural people, who have survived in nature far longer than agriculturalists, and they have their own stories and culture which definitely include communication with animals.

Animals do talk, by the way, still. They just don’t usually speak in human verbal languages.

Technically, the Eden story is pre-Christian.

@marinelife – I had the chance to read all three articles on Celtic, Japanese and Indian mythology. The latter mentions a sculpture with an “Animal Chain”. The picture looks stunning similar to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Musicians_of_Bremen – just wondering, a coincidence?

@laureth – Thanks for the links. Cave art as such could still mean the people were not thinking of animals as talking creatures. But at some point this idea came up. But how? Animals don’t use human language (except perhaps parrots who merely imitate human language). What tiggered the talking part?

When you say pre-Christian, you probably mean pre-Jewish or even pre-Canaanite. And as far as I know Greek mythology was first recorded about 900 BCE, i.e. is of younger age.

@mattbrowne – You might be asking when we first started acknowledging the archetypes. I think the talking animal is one of those. If animals can be seen as totems, too, or in any spiritual way (as they surely must have been), any dream or vision of your animal coming to give you a message would have “spoken” it to you in some way.

You ask, “how did the people at the time interpret” them, perhaps as “symbols for a deeper meaning.” I’m guessing that part of the Great Leap that occurred around 30K-40K BCE (the time we start seeing representational art) probably involved the beginning or refinement of symbolic thinking. (Another good candidate for this is 130,000 or so years old, the burial of the dead.) If you can grasp something like spirituality or symbolic thinking, than you can also grasp that there are archetypes, not just animals but Animal, if that makes sense.