All civilizations had stories, and there's a reason for that. Some people told stories about themselves so people would know what they've been through, while others tell stories to explain why things are the way they are. But I think that, most of the time, people told stories to explain real problems or concepts in ways that seem extraordinary. In reality, people are a walking story. Every time you meet someone, you find out part of their story, and if you put all the stories of all the people of the world, you get the story of humankind.
Stories tell us a lot about the culture that told it. They explain their morals, how they communicated, and what they believed in. Stories tell us about how they lived from the setting, whether they had high walls or fences, mud houses or stone castles. These stories survive over time because, sometimes, they're just really popular. They get told over and over, and people just remember it without even knowing how they first heard it. Others are engraved in stone, and others find it after many years. Unfortunately, many stories are lost in time, and people don't remember them, which is a shame. People today might enjoy stories that weren't popular in ancient times, and now we might never know about those stories that were not remembered.
Stories can also tell us about progress, by comparing the characters at the beginning to the characters at the end. The improvement might compare to the civilization that told it. It could also be more subtle. In Gilgamesh the Hero, a rewritten version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (written on stone tablets), the builders of Uruk were always building because of the king's orders. This could also be interpreted as the people who told this story were building constantly. Also, these buildings they might have been frequently constructing could have served a useful purpose, making progress for the civilization. So far, ancient civilizations are a story of progress.
