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:’) That’s an old debate — anthropologists can’t show that tales passed down strictly orally with no resort to old written versions are preserved intact, unless there’s a sudden discovery of just such an old written version. I don’t think that’s ever happened as such.

The closest may be the unearthing of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that’s hardly the same thing, because the Bible has existed in various written forms for as long as 3000 years — there’s just nothing older than the DSS, and there are slight differences here and there, even though the copyists have kept multiple written versions alive (and in a great many languages beginning about 600 years ago).

In his 1980s docu, Michael Wood tracks down a couple of keepers of an oral tradition, one in Turkey, the other in Ireland, in order to make a case for centuries-long survivals of long epics by illiterate groups. I don’t think there’s anyone in the field who now thinks (or perhaps, ever thought) that the Iliad (at least!) was all one tale throughout the centuries, supposedly before it was written down. The oldest complete Iliad dates (it sez here) to the 10th century; the oldest surviving fragment (I think 1st c BC) can actually be seen (in photo) in Bettany Hughes’ docu, “Helen of Troy”. Couldn’t find a copy online.

http://www.bettanyhughes.co.uk/b_articles_sex_lies.htm

http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=14630

http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/records/4r.html

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/06/iliad_scan

http://chs.harvard.edu/chs/chs_home

An American scholar named Milman Parry (1902-1935) developed the theory that the Homeric poems are oral poems--there was no fixed text and every performance would have been different. The poet was basically composing in front of a live audience, not writing words down--he had basic themes and plots and had a large store of formulas that he could use to put together lines that would fit the metrical requirements of a line of poetry.

Parry studied how living oral poets learned their techniques and made recordings of such poetry (in Yugoslavia) in order to understand better how Homer would have operated. The Homeric poems are much longer than could have been performed on one occasion but show the traits of oral poetry (like many repeated phrases). Homer would have inherited basic stories from earlier generations. Some genuine information was preserved but it's hard to know what really dates back to the 13th century BC and what was added by later poets--how many of the figures in the Iliad are real people and how many are made-up names, for example.

It's not entirely clear why and when the Iliad and Odyssey were written down--obviously not before the adoption of the alphabet. Later on rhapsodes memorized the fixed texts word for word--Plato's dialogue Ion features a rhapsode named Ion who knows Homer's poems by heart.

an anhropologist some years ago found that the oral traditions regarding the sea voyages of the polynesian people who left Tahiti for Hawaii were remarkably accurate as to the navigational info which had been transferred over generations by the keepers of the oral tradition using mnemetic remembrance codes.

We all remember the boy scout pledge amd the pledge of allegiance that we memorized.
those are merely micro oral traditions that virtually everyone can remember.

I don[t think it is unusual or impossible that culturally important, but lengthly, stories of a culture can be memorized by selected ‘shamans’ or singers to pass down the traditions of a people.