origin of stories

I'm reading a fascinating book by Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Boyd counters the current thinking that stories are strictly a cultural phenomenon, by making the case that telling stories was an adaptive behavior crucial to our evolutionary development.

In an attempt to explore the beginnings of storytelling, he also looks at art, and comments on the drawings in the Chauvet Cave in France, which are believed to date back 32,000 years:

The wall markings were hardly the casual doodles of idle afternoons. The grotto at Chauvet was no dwelling place, and the drawings were no stone-age wallpaper. This remote cave, deep underground, accessible only by the light of a burning brand or a tallow candle, seems to have been selected precisely for its remoteness from disturbance, whether by weather, plant, or animal, expressly to preserve the art of particularly awe-inspiring craftsmen. We, too, prize and preserve our art, but who would bet that the most treasured possessions of our greatest galleries, or the galleries themselves, will be intact in another 30,000 years?

I recall something else I read about how those who knew about the paintings would bring visitors down into the depths of the cave with lit torches. When the flickering light hit the paintings there must have been quite a shock with the animals seeming almost to be animated. Think about the cinematic power of these cave paintings, long before representational media had been invented, when the only entertainment was the music and rhythmic dancing of early peoples.
Garnet