Some people think that fairy tales are just stories to amuse children, but their universal and enduring appeal may be due to more serious reasons

有人认为童话仅仅是娱乐儿童的故事，但它们普遍且持久的吸引力可能源于更为深刻的原因。

People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother's clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? In some versions, the wolf swallows up the grandmother, while in others it locks her in a cupboard. In some stories Red Riding Hood gets the better of the wolf on her own, while in others a hunter or a woodcutter hears her cries and comes to her rescue.

不同文化背景的人相互讲述着童话故事，但是同-个故事在世界不同地方通常有多种形式。在欧洲孩子熟悉的小红帽故事中，一个年轻的女孩在看望奶奶的路上遇到了一只狼，并告诉了他自己要去的地方。狼跑到前面她之前把她的祖母干掉，然后穿着祖母的衣服上床等待小红帽。你可能以为自己知道这个故事-但是你知道的是哪个版本?在某些版本中，狼吞下祖母，而在另一些版本中，狼将外婆锁在橱柜中。在某些故事中，小红帽靠自己战胜了狼，而在另一些故事中，猎人或伐木工听到了她的哭声后赶来救她。

The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. 'It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it's got this survival- relevant information in it,' says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. 'We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,' he says. That hasn't stopped anthropologists, folklorists* and other academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in human society. Now Tehrani has found a way to test these ideas, borrowing a technique from evolutionary biologists.

这些故事的吸引力通常归因于它们所包含的警告性信息:在“小红帽“中，是要听妈妈的话，避免与陌生人说话。英国达勒姆大学的人类学家杰米泰拉尼表示:“对于这个故事，我们可能会感到很有趣，因为它包含了与生存有关的信息。“但是他的研究结论却相反。他说:“尽管我们知道童话是一种非常古老的题材，但我们对故事的历史和史前知识知之甚少，。“这并没有阻止人类学家、民俗学家和其他学者构想出理论，来解释童话在人类社会中的重要性。现在，泰拉尼借用了进化生物学家的技术，找到了验证这些想法的途径。

To work out the evolutionary history, development and relationships among groups of organisms, biologists compare the characteristics of living species in a process called 'phylogenetic analysis'. Tehrani has used the same approach to compare related versions of fairy tales to discover how they have evolved and which elements have survived longest.

为了弄清生物群的进化历史、发展和关系，生物学家通过一个叫“系统发育分析“的过程比较了生物物种的特征。泰赫拉尼使用相同的方法比较了童话的不同版本，来研究它们的演变方式以及哪些元素存在的时间最长。

Tehrani's analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms, which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids. Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa, East Asia and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from oral traditions. Once his phylogenetic analysis had established that they were indeed related, he used the same methods to explore how they have developed and altered over time.

泰赫拉尼的分析着眼于多种形式的“小红帽”，其中包括另一个西方童话故事，即“狼与孩子”。在调查得知这两个故事的不同版本以及相似的故事分别来自非洲、东亚和其他地区后，他最终总结了58个版本的口述传统故事。一旦他的系统发育分析确定它们确实相关，他就会使用相同的方法来探索它们是如何随着时间发展和变化的。

First he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in it – that visiting a relative, only to be met by a scary animal in disguise, is more fundamental than whether the visitor is a little girl or three siblings, or the animal is a tiger instead of a wolf.

首先，他验证了一些假设，来看看故事的哪些方面在演变过程中变化最小，从而表明了它们的重要性。民俗主义者认为，故事中发生的事情比故事中的角色更重要--去探亲，然后遇到一只吓人的伪装过的动物，比拜访者是一个小女孩还是三个兄弟姐妹、动物是老虎还是狼要更重要。

However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of incidents compared with that of characters. 'Certain episodes are very stable because they are crucial to the story, but there are lots of other details that can evolve quite freely,' he says. Neither did his analysis support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved part. He found no significant difference in the flexibility of events there compared with the beginning or the end.

然而，特赫拉尼发现，事件发展的速度与角色发展的速度没有显著差异。他说:“某些情节非常稳定，因为它们对于故事是至关重要的，但还有许多其他细节可以自由发展。“他的分析也没有显示，故事的中心部分就是最稳定的部分。他发现，与开始或结束时相比，事件的灵活性没有显著差异。

But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary elements of the story. 'Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that these narratives include really important information about the environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff that's relevant to survival,' he says. Yet in his analysis such elements were just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important enough to be reproduced from generation to generation?

但是，当他研究这个故事的警示作用时，令人惊喜的结果就出来了。他说:“有关狩猎者和采集者的民间故事的研究表明，这些故事包括了环境以及在那个环境里可能面临的危险这些真正重要的信息，这些与生存有关的信息。“然而，在他的分析中，这些元素与看似琐碎的细节一样灵活。那么，什么元素是重要到可以世代相传保留下来的呢?

The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf, turned out to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an idea: 'In an oral context, a story won't survive because of one great teller. It also needs to be interesting when it's told by someone who's not necessarily a great storyteller.' Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf, then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story remain popular, no matter how badly it's told.

答案似乎是恐惧--故事的血腥和令人毛骨悚然的方面，例如狼吃掉祖母这个情节，被证明是保存得最好的。为什么这些细节被一代又一代的故事讲述者保留下来，而其他特性却没有?泰赫拉尼有个想法:“在口头上讲，一个故事不会因为一个好的叙述者就留存下去。它需要在被不出色的叙述者讲述时也能同样有趣。“也许是被狼整吞然后割开它的肚子依旧能救出活着的祖母这个情节异常激动人心，以至于无论这故事讲的有多糟，这个故事依然很受欢迎。

Jack Zipes at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, is unconvinced by Tehrani's views on fairy tales. 'Even if they're gruesome, they won't stick unless they matter,' he says. He believes the perennial theme of women as victims in stories like Little Red Riding Hood explains why they continue to feel relevant. But Tehrani points out that although this is often the case in Western versions, it is not always true elsewhere. In Chinese and Japanese versions, often known as The Tiger Grandmother, the villain is a woman, and in both Iran and Nigeria, the victim is a boy.

明尼阿波利斯明尼苏达州大学的杰克·齐佩斯不赞成泰赫拉尼对童话的看法。他说:“即使有些故事令人毛骨悚然，但如果不重要的话就不会流传下去了。“他认为，像小红帽这类故事中，女性受害者这一永恒的主题阐释了这类故事具有价值的原因。但是泰赫拉尼指出，尽管西方版本经常是女性受害者，但在其他地方并非总是如此。在中文和日文版本中，通常被称为“老虎祖母”，反派是一个妇人，在伊朗和尼日利亚，受害者是一个男孩。

Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn't surprised by Tehrani's findings. 'Habits and morals change, but the things that scare us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that's designed to scare us – those are constant,' he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger, and so build up resistance to negative emotions.

丹麦奥胡斯大学的马赛厄斯·克拉森对泰赫拉尼的发现并不感到惊讶。他说:“习惯和道德观念正在改变，但令我们感到恐惧的事情和那些我们从娱乐活动中寻找的恐吓我们的事实却都是永恒的。克拉森相信恐怖故事让我们不用经历真正的危险就可以体会到害怕的感觉，并以此增强对负面情绪的抵抗力。