Hey there, I had been thinking a long while on the stuff we are fed as children in the form of entertainment. In a lot of needs growing up, there was often a person needing to be saved when dealing with "barbarian people's" where the heros had to save a girl from being thrown into an active volcano

It got me curious to where this idea originated at all, and if it is in any way historically accurate.

If it has, where? What lead it to be such a fad for story telling?