Why do people tell stories? How have they learned to tell them? What cultural achievements are associated with storytelling? And what is storytelling, anyway? Fritz Breithaupt provides a surprising answer to these questions. Storytelling allows for excuses to be presented. Those with an excuse can extricate themselves from difficult situations. The essence of an excuse lies in providing new, often more complex descriptions for actions that have already been judged. In the first excuse in human history, Adam admits to eating the apple but denies responsibility, claiming that Eve had prompted him to do so. Starting from this original scene, the book traces the intertwined paths of legal responsibility and literature, also drawing on insights from evolutionary biology.