Biography famous poets

Throughout most of human history, before literacy became widespread, poetry was the most common means of cultural dissemination.

Rhyming verse likely first emerged around hunter-gatherer campfires as a means of group entertainment, as those gathered around pitched their contributions of rhyme. Some must have been better than the rest at wordplay, and thus emerged the first poets.

Aside from entertainment, rhyming words lend themselves to memorization, and before the invention of writing to record things, poems became the most reliable means of transmitting information deemed valuable within groups, and preserving it to pass on to future generations – a methodology still followed by primitive tribes and hunter-gatherer groups around the world.

That legacy of gathering around and rhyming words around a campfire never left the species, and poetry continued to resonate with mankind long af