What are the characteristics of early literature in diverse part of the world, including the ancient Near East, Greece and South Asia, China and Rome?

This is in
some ways a tricky question, because it's asking for a discussion encompassing a broad
geographical expanse, which risks erasing the particularities of different regions and
traditions. It is a difficulty further complicated by the tendencies for academic and scholarly
research to be focused along particular regions. One can expect a classicist to be able to
comment in great detail concerning the particularities of Greek and Roman literature, but their
knowledge might be far more fragmentary as far as it relates to the specificities of Ancient
China or Southern Asia. For this reason, I will tailor my answer to the specific literary
traditions one can observe in the Mediterranean World and the Near East.

First, and perhaps most importantly, I would note that storytelling seems to be a recurring
theme in the human condition, one which far precedes the written form. There were stories long
before any literature was ever written down. Ultimately, the oldest stories tend to
have...