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M.R. Mathias, I find your bringing up the tradition of oral storytelling a weak defense, at best. Yes, stories were told and retold in olden times, but if a story wasn't told well, or wasn't a good story, it died. The traveling storytellers who gathered information and retold it to other tribes/countries/kings/whatever had to make the stories interesting while still getting the main point across. They were paid according to how well they performed. If no one liked their stories, they weren't fed and sheltered, and not allowed back again.
Apart from the actual story is the grammar. No, they didn't use commas, semicolons or quotation marks, but they didnt' have to, those are written marks showing visual cues to how things sound when said aloud. We naturally pause while speaking, which is represented by commas or periods. When a story is told it is quite clear when a character is "speaking", sometimes the teller uses a different voice. It is very hard to read text without these cues, and nearly impossible to know the author's intent.
Soemtimes the placement of a comma makes a world of difference. The title of a book I have seen is the only thing that comes to mind right now, but illustrates my point. "Eats Shoots and Leaves" could mean someone eats the leaves and shoots of plants, or it could mean, with proper comma placement that someone eats, shoots someone or thing, then leaves. Do you see the difference? (Yes, it was a book on grammar) "Eats shoots and leaves" tell what they eat, while "Eats, shoots, and leaves" tells what they did.
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