The historian Yuval Noah Harari has also made the case that storytelling enabled human beings to survive and thrive. He suggests our capacity to share stories in the form of gossip enabled small tribes to grow because it let people know who they could trust. Research shows a group bonded by gossip alone cannot exceed 150 people. Harari says human beings used fictional stories to cooperate in numbers larger than 150.

We can’t be certain whether storytelling is an evolutionary adaptation written into our DNA. But we can be certain that stories continue to perform important group-level functions. We still unite around common myths: religions, states, businesses and football teams are stories that provide people with purpose, meaning and identity powerfully uniting modern tribes.

Stories also help us make sense of the world and our place in it, impart important life lessons, help us rehearse challenging situations in a safe setting (like flight simulators), put us in other people’s shoes increasing our empathy and, of course, divert and entertain helping us cope with stress.

Dr Smith is now considering how the findings of the Agta study might usefully be applied within organisations. There is already growing interest in using stories more consciously and purposefully. Dr Smith is exploring whether stories could be used strategically to increase cooperation in areas such as encouraging environmentally-friendly behaviours.