Why is written history better source material compared to oral history? And why do some society’s decide to pass down knowledge and history through one way or another.
Take for example, Abubakari II’s journey across the Atlantic ocean. It is a debated topic because of the limited amount of physical evidence, but also because the accounts are transcripts from oral traditions. However the Mali empire and the Manding language would have had access to written scripts because of Islam. Are there other examples throughout the world of a literate people purposefully favoring oral over written traditions?
The reason why oral history is often times not considered reliable is because the more a story, event, or whatever gets passed down the more it changes. While the story or information may only slightly change this slight change multiplied over and over creates huge discrepancies. Its basically like playing telephone it will always end differently then how it began. Written history is by no means perfect but when a story, event, historical figure, etc is written about, it is less likely to have as drastic changes as there is in oral history. However, depending on what your researching oral history can be considered a better and more reliable source than written documents. In the end it all matters upon what is being researched, this will dictate which sources a person would more likely use.