Beauty and the Beast

Not very often I get a chance to post in the Mythology box but at www.sciencenews.org/article/no-fairy-tale-origins-some-famous-stories-go… … which claims some fairy tales, such as Rumpelstiltskin and Beauty and the Beast, and the Smith making a pact with the devil, go way back into history – far into the bronze ages. The latter story in particular, they say, goes back to the 4th millennium BC, and the article is published in the Royal Society Open Science journal. This is not surprising to some people but no doubt mainstream might not necessarily be pleased as it opens a can of worms. Take the Cinderella story – that has a distinct Catastrophic edge.