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Passage: Oral traditions are often seen as less reliable than written records because they are subject to the 'corruption' of memory. However, this view assumes that the purpose of oral history is the verbatim preservation of facts. In many oral cultures, the goal of storytelling is 'structural amnesia'—the strategic forgetting of details that are no longer socially relevant. Genealogies, for example, are often adjusted to reflect current political alliances rather than biological truth. If two clans become allies, their oral histories may 'discover' a common ancestor to legitimize the new bond. Oral tradition is thus a living, flexible archive that prioritizes the stability of the present over the accuracy of the past. The term 'structural amnesia' refers to the:

1. Deliberate omission of historical facts that do not serve current social needs.
2. It reflects an inability of oral cultures to remember much of anything.
3. It is an accidental loss of historical data from lacking written records.
4. It describes the biological decline of memory among cultures that never adopted books.

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