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    The Memory Code: Unlocking the Secrets of the Lives of the Ancients and the Power of the Human Mind
    Unavailable
    The Memory Code: Unlocking the Secrets of the Lives of the Ancients and the Power of the Human Mind
    Unavailable
    The Memory Code: Unlocking the Secrets of the Lives of the Ancients and the Power of the Human Mind
    Ebook489 pages6 hours

    The Memory Code: Unlocking the Secrets of the Lives of the Ancients and the Power of the Human Mind

    By Lynne Kelly

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    About this ebook

    In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem.

    Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world. In turn, she has then discovered that this ancient memory technique is the secret purpose behind the great prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, which have puzzled archaeologists for so long.

    The stone circles across Britain and northern Europe, the elaborate stone houses of New Mexico, huge animal shapes in Peru, the statues of Easter Island - these all serve as the most effective memory system ever invented by humans. They allowed people in non-literate cultures to memorize the vast amounts of information they needed to survive. But how?

    For the first time, Lynne Kelly reveals the purpose of these monuments and their uses as 'memory places', and shows how we can use this ancient technique to train our minds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtlantic Books
    Release dateFeb 2, 2017
    ISBN9781782399070
    Unavailable
    The Memory Code: Unlocking the Secrets of the Lives of the Ancients and the Power of the Human Mind
    Author

    Lynne Kelly

    Dr. Lynne Kelly is a science writer and an Honorary Research Associate at La Trobe University. She lives in Melbourne, Australia and is the author of The Memory Code and Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies (Cambridge).

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    Reviews for The Memory Code

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    • 2/5
      The thesis is that Stonehenge, the Nazca lines, the Easter Island moai, and many (most?) other early non-practical constructions are memory palaces. Surely true up to a degree, spatial arrangement of memory is intuitive, hardwired into human brains. But as is common with someone with a pet theory, overreaching seems inevitable. I read most of the book as a cautionary tale of pattern-matching confirmation bias. Good way to brush up on the current state of archaeology.