. 1We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, wherepeople first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where evennow people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is torecount it as sagas-legends handed down from one generation of story-tellersto another. These legends are useful because they can tell us something aboutmigrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what theydid. Anthropologi
