Mindscape 60 | Lynne Kelly on Memory Palaces, Ancient and Modern

Memory takes different forms. Memories can be encoded in the strength of neural connections in our brains, but there’s a sense in which photographs and written records are memories as well. What did people do before such forms of memory even existed? Lynne Kelly is a science writer and researcher who specializes in forms of memory in the ancient world, as well as a competitive memory expert in her own right. She has theorized that ancient structures such as Stonehenge might have served as memory palaces, encoding social knowledge over extended periods of time. We talk about how to improve your own memory, the origin of religion, and how prehistoric cultures preserved their know-how.

Lynne Kelly received her Ph.D. in English from La Trobe University. Originally trained as a computer scientist, she has worked as an educator before transitioning into science writing and memory research. She is an Honorary Research Associate at La Trobe University. She is the author of a number of books, including The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal. Her work on memory methods and ancient societies was published as an academic book, Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture, as well as in trade form as The Memory Code: The Traditional Aboriginal Memory Technique That Unlocks the Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Ancient Monuments the World Over. Her most recent book is Memory Craft: Improve Your Memory Using the Most Powerful Methods From Around the World.

[robbowman]

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy most of the Mindscape podcasts, but this is the most inspirational and illuminating one yet. I'm sure that is partly because the topics covered here are very important, deeply connected to what it is to be a human being and that I know very little about this subject matter, but I'm also sure that it's just as much because Lynne Kelly is such a unique thinker. Please do a follow up sometime - perhaps on some of the things that had to be missed out or covered briefly due to time constraints.

[Pilbaranb]

This is amazing. Thanks so much for again having something a bit different!

[mamunurrashid]

Lynne is a great lady. Her writing has influenced me a lot in my journey in the world of memory...

[lewkor]

As always, great podcast Sean Carrol! This speaks to me personally as a native of West Africa (Ivory Coast) where there is a long and rich tradition of Griots aka Djelis. Djelis are storyteller, historians and troubadours of some sort. They are known to have a gigantic memory and to have good knowledge of past historical events, of genealogy, etc. I am not sure if they use "memory palaces" as a technique to remember anyhting but I suspect they do. In their case I also suspect that melodic music and rhythms play a big part in their ability to record the community's past and to boost their nearly encyclopedic memories. Interesting research path to explore . . .

[suzieQna]

Thanks for posting the lukasas photo on the blog! I’m obsessed😻♥️ spot-on interview questions. Super excited about the neuroscience collab and the research yet to come on this!

It seems that memory palaces are a type of linked lists. We walk through the chain to retrieve what we need.

Personally, I remember things by first remembering where was I when I thought the things I want to remember.
I guess that makes sense in how our mind associate places and things.

[ThexInsidexMan]

I had some teachers touch on that "most myths and ancient structures that weren't homes were used for teaching since writing and reading wasn't viable

[darianharrison]

Lynne Kelly gives a nice theory of how we passed on information before writing.

In the field of Machine Learning, particularly in the subset of Reinforcement Learning, we call these Memory Palaces pathways, "Eligibility Traces". They are an elegant algorithmic mechanism which provides significant computational advantages by refining credit-assignment.

[dermot]

Really good podcast, I must try to get my memory palace working. I always have the big picture seldom the detail.

[hc-ff]

This kind of discussion underestimates the huge amount of memorized items carried around by modern humans, which far surpasses anything a primitive, preliterate human might have carried around. It's because of the sheer emphasis on survivability under conditions of extreme scarcity. We don't live under such conditions, nevertheless I would argue that we conversely exercise survivability under conditions of extreme complexity. It's a different game, but which demands a great deal of memorizing just as well.


No doubt for preliterate societies, the usefulness of memory techniques must have been obvious. But once you have the simplicity of a phonetic set of symbols, and a durable writing medium, you can memorialize a great deal more than you could with ideographic memory techniques. In fact, the utter simplicity of only having to memorize a simple writing code, and an ultra simple counting method, liberates the mind to conceptualize(and name, and classify) everything else about the world.


For many kinds of problems, primitive peoples had summary answers. You killed strangers. Even in medieval societies, strangers arriving in a village were often violently dealt with, branded, expelled, warned to never come back. Etc., etc. Today we have a whole bunch of memorized rules that prohibit that sort of thing.



How would you operationalize Pythagora's Theorem with "memory devices"?


Furthermore, my "memory palace" is unique to me. You would have to re-invent the whole thing for yourself. That's totally unlike the universality of 2+2=4, once you know how to count and perform simple operations.

[ratsukutsi]

I really wish there were videos for Sean's podcast

[aaron]

Wow, she's great. Excellent speaker.

[LKaramandi]

one of my favorite topics! Coming from a sound-engineering background, it feels really powerful how one can wield sound these days... though finding PURPOSE in this garden of major labels and millions upon millions of really unpaid and unadvertised original music/art-creatives to show how sound can help reinforce information as a collective making it or dancing to it! Problem is society has really gotten their values from daddy capitalism these days... and so we mirror those often materialistic views in order to get accepted.
Those big wielders of power in the music field have so much control over what gets to be that they inevitably start altering the media perspective, and therefore somewhat the "Zeitgeist" of the listeners. The consequence is emotionally powerfull songs without any real reason or information beyond the emotional packaging. Everything is made to "touch you" but does NOT use the CLOSENESS OF INFORMATION that is individually possible if there is a worthwhile context in the "touching" song.
Have a good day everyone :)

[nathanlaney]

I wonder... I make my living as a classical musician, and one of the things we agonize over is memorizing music. In order to memorize, say, an hour and ten minute concert program, we usually do loads of mechanical repetition to build 'muscle memory' as some call it (although that term is certainly misleading). But no matter how much repetition, memory blanks are very common, usually related to nerves and performance anxiety. I've had experiences where even though I 'know' the piece, I've blanked so badly in the middle that I can't even remember where to put my hands on the keyboard to jump back on. I've heard public speakers have similar experiences. Some performers I know sort of visually 'scan' through the score, the black dots on the page. But what's interesting is that the visualization is usually of a specific copy of the score, not generic. I've visualized a passage of music on stage and even seen the coffee stain from the copy I learnt from. I wonder if memory palaces could help somehow, although I wouldn't be sure how to go about connecting the physical act of performing (i.e. actually pressing the keys in real time) with a physical space. Maybe visualizing yourself performing as you move steadily through a familiar landscape, connecting each passage with a feature as it passes by? Although I suppose there's a chance this could be more distracting than helpful. Very thought provoking indeed.

[phoule]

I suppose FB is a modern memory palace, although some moments I haven't photographed are the ones I best recall.

[WitoldBanasik]

Thank you Sir for your brilliant podcasts. I admire all the geniuses that surround me. I love versatility, multitalents blessesd with charisma, wit, politeness, hardworking and unassuming. Being versatile myself am competitive and cooperative at the same time. Thats why i adore Judy Garland. As far as memorizing goes artists I know find litte problems with memorizing faces and voices and music.. me including. Some musicians are quite good at math because making compositions and poutting them in musical notations are like using integral and differential calculus. We have 7 senses in fact,
5 obvious and two not quite imprinted in peoples mind. I mean body movement and intuition.. Just some food for thought for today Sir. By the way please say hello to your Youtube friends and tell them please that I would love to make some donation to your YT channel. Would it be possible this way or another ? Cheers to you and to your wonderful guests anyway Sir !

[Palau_Legend]

Memory palace?! Like moonwalking with Einstein by josh foer? Looking forward to getting outa class so I can listen to this episode!

[rtravkin]

An interesting conversation. Also, a typo in the transcript: "pneumonic" instead of "mnemonic". :)

[hagitterkeltoub]

hi sean, i was wondering if you could host anthony peake on your show he is a well known auther on the subject of consciousness

[rantallion]

i wonder what the difference would be between
the other species of human. neanderthals, denisovans, etal