Case studies have long been used, particularly in the teaching of ethical and social behaviour. Sometimes the cases have concerned gods and goddesses, at other times the characters have been animals or people. One has only to recall the Panchatantra, the Buddhist Jataka, Homer, the fables of Aesop, the parables of Christ, the legends of the Australian aborigines and the folk memories of peoples with a long oral tradition to establish the antiquity of the method.