Abstract

Purpose: This paper critically examines the role of oral traditions as instruments for transmitting historical knowledge across generations. Despite increasing reliance on written records, oral narratives persist as epistemic vehicles that encode social memory, cultural identity, and historical consciousness. The study interrogates the mechanisms, reliability, and limitations of oral knowledge transmission in African and global contexts.

Methodology: Employing a qualitative doctrinal approach, the study conducts a critical review of primary theoretical texts and contemporary empirical analyses. A comparative framework is applied to assess the epistemological validity of oral traditions against archaeological, linguistic, and written historical evidence.

Findings: Oral traditions emerge as dynamic, adaptive repositories of historical knowledge, capable of preserving complex social and political histories. They facilitate communal memory reconstruction, moral instruction, and identity negotiation. However, the reliability of oral transmission is mediated by performance context, mnemonic devices, and socio-political influences, which can both preserve and distort historical content.

Originality: By synthesizing classical theoretical foundations with recent empirical studies, this paper offers a nuanced understanding of oral traditions as legitimate historical sources. It challenges the epistemic hierarchy that privileges written records and situates oral knowledge within a critical historiographical and cognitive framework.