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Fairy tale origins thousands of years old, researchers say
by ooli

    The Boy Who Stole Ogre's Treasure, and could be traced back to when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split more than 5,000 years ago.

    Analysis showed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be about 4,000 years old.

    And a folk tale called The Smith And The Devil, about a blacksmith selling his soul in a pact with the Devil in order to gain supernatural abilities, was estimated to go back 6,000 years to the Bronze Age.

As much as I want to believe. I have a hard time understanding how they could track back a story without written proof.