From Hieroglyphs to Hashtags – How Storytelling Never Stopped

I remember reading an article in my world history class about hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt and the role of scriptures and symbols in early storytelling traditions. There were also examples from ancient China: paintings, scrolls, and oral myths passed down for generations.

What fascinated me most was how these stories managed to survive. Thousands of years later, there we were, a room full of sophomores, trying to decode what those symbols meant, piecing together the thoughts and emotions of people who lived millennia before us.

That got me thinking: what is our version of that? What will people study thousands of years from now, when they want to understand us?

I think the answer might be YouTube.

It sounds funny at first, but in a way, YouTube has become our modern-day form of storytelling, our version of oral tradition and ancient inscriptions. Instead of chiseling words into stone or painting stories onto walls, we film them. People share everything: vlogs, documentaries, tutorials, music, and memories, and they’re archived permanently online.

Someday, future generations might scroll through our videos the same way we scroll through ancient texts, trying to understand what mattered to us, how we lived, and what we believed in.