Many scholars and scientists suggest that poetry is one of the earliest literary forms of expression developed by primitive human beings, second to cave paintings and engravings, which constitutes the oldest-known instances of visual presentation in the historical timeline of humanity’s artistic evolution.
When early humans discovered that they were able to portray and communicate ideas, concepts, and complex stories by creating engravings and paintings using pigments and tools found in their natural habitats, they did not hesitate to conjure vivid yet rudimentary forms of expression. They tried carving and drawing on whatever surfaces and raw materials they could work with and doing so constantly as they chronicled the highlights of their daily lives.
Eventually, as human beings became more proficient, diverse, and fluent in verbal and written communication, humanity’s linguistic aspect gave rise to the art form known as poetry – an artistic, literary medium embodied by oral and or written creative expression.
The invention of writing made it possible for chroniclers and shamans from Asia, Mesopotamia, Constantinople, South Africa, Egypt, and Ancient Greece to note down homages, Vedas, stories, and mythology that persisted in their communities for countless generations. In modern times, the art form has evolved into numerous variations and styles – one notable example being Jaime P. Fidler’s book titled “Jaime’s Inspirations: Poems from the Heart and Mind.”
The art form itself possibly goes back to prehistoric humanity and early mystics who cataloged incidents in image narratives, signs, compositions, and songs about the country’s hunting and characteristics in which these individuals resided. Poetry has also brought tribes into transformed or spiritual worlds. When vocabulary evolved, verbal chroniclers moved between different regions and lands to relay new stories and myths.
Most certainly, the stanzas or breaks in written poetry may have started as a sequence of deliberate gaps for verbal novelists throughout their readings. Some may wonder what purpose they served – many scholars and historians believe that ancient storytellers had to regain their breath and composure to prepare the next section of the narrative.
Following the advent of verbal and written expression, individuals have represented their anterior and posterior realms – and the environments of their ancestors, mythology, and cultures – via a wide variety of different poetic styles. Like other types of expression and culture, the development of poetry has accelerated in productive artistic periods and, in general, open cultures such as that of Ancient Greece.
Thus, for instance, the literary poem soared forth on the shoulders of two women – Enheduanna and Sappho – during the golden age of a pair of powerful world-power civilizations, Sumeria and Ancient Greece, and the spectacular sequence begins with Ancient Greek composers, Homer’s classics and Aesop’s parables.
A decent time in history to reflect on how poetry has changed over time is the famous era of epic poetry. Almost all of the early established literature was a type of epic poetry, including some that stretch back thousands of years before people started composing their tales.
One of the early greatest works, the Epic of Gilgamesh, goes back to about two millennia before the birth of Jesus Christ when it was a defining story and characteristic of Sumerian culture. Researchers conclude that this means that storytelling and literature were initially created to help storytellers, who also serve as scribes and chroniclers, familiarize and master their tales more quickly. As recorded, the epic story of King Gilgamesh can be traced back to at least a thousand years before Christ.
Composers may well have developed, changed, or utilized literary forms, but generations into the future, these same aspects give a glimpse of the human societies from which they originated. The glorious poetic love and erotica of ancient Rome and Greece represented communities responsive to physically and emotionally-based expression.
A vast multitude of known forms has taken root in these ancient civilizations, including homage, fairy tale, virtuosic, and sensual verses. So revered was the poem that several of the nine classical Muses influenced unique types of literature: Erato (romantic literature), Calliope (epic poems), and something known as Polyrhythm (sacred verses). In a society that regularly combines poetry, literature, and theater, the two themes of tragedy and music have become closely related and were associated together in the classical era of poetry in the ancient world.