[nologic01]

We have so thoroughly lost the art of oral information transmission it is hard to even have a gut feeling as to how it may have worked over generations.

For example did people distinguish "fact from fiction" as they were passing along stories (in some way we would recognize today)?

I somehow doubt that "fact checking" had to wait for Thucydides (in the Hellenic world) [1] as it seems like an important survival attribute, but how did they signal that the story coming up should be taken at face value or with a grain of salt?

[1] Herodotus has been criticized for his inclusion of "legends and fanciful accounts" in his work. The contemporaneous historian Thucydides accused him of making up stories for entertainment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herodotus