<P> Folklorists of the "Finnish" (or historical - geographical) school attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with inconclusive results . Sometimes influence, especially within a limited area and time, is clearer, as when considering the influence of Perrault's tales on those collected by the Brothers Grimm . Little Briar - Rose appears to stem from Perrault's The Sleeping Beauty, as the Grimms' tale appears to be the only independent German variant . Similarly, the close agreement between the opening of the Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood and Perrault's tale points to an influence, although the Grimms' version adds a different ending (perhaps derived from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids). </P> <P> Fairy tales tend to take on the color of their location, through the choice of motifs, the style in which they are told, and the depiction of character and local color . </P> <P> The Brothers Grimm believed that European fairy tales derived from the cultural history shared by all Indo - European peoples and were therefore ancient, far older than written records . This view is supported by research by the anthropologist Jamie Tehrani and the folklorist Sara Graca Da Silva using phylogenetic analysis, a technique developed by evolutionary biologists to trace the relatedness of living and fossil species . Among the tales analysed were Jack and the Beanstalk, traced to the time of splitting of Eastern and Western Indo - European, over 5000 years ago . Both Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin appear to have been created some 4000 years ago . The story of The Smith and the Devil (Deal with the Devil) appears to date from the Bronze Age, some 6000 years ago . </P> <P> Originally, adults were the audience of a fairy tale just as often as children . Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the fairy tale became associated with children's literature . </P>

What is the purpose of a fairy tale