What is Story Telling?

In this day and age with all of the reading we do over the Internet, I feel that today storytelling is just simply our daily recitation of events that we may or may not embellish a little while we are having conversations with friends.  But before this age of technology storytelling was a valuable part of every culture.  Ancient cultures used story telling to continue and pass on the traditions of the past in place of the horrible history books that we have to read today.  Some of the stories that these cultures passed on became so magnificent that they have become immortal and are continued today in the formed of legends. So in essence story telling can be no bigger than the simple relating of events but yet can grow into the backbone of a culture.