Ancient Aboriginal Memory Technique Discovered

Many Westerners use a memory palace technique for remembering information but this ancient Aboriginal technique is thought to be better.

Sydney, Australia, 2021-May-28 — /EPR Network/ — When you need to remember a lot of information, what technique do you use? Maybe you make a mnemonic, write a poem, or simply write it all down. One technique that is recommended by experts is the so-called memory palace technique, in which you imagine the objects you need to remember as being scattered around an imaginary mansion. Throughout this mansion, you create clues that help you remember the information.

Despite the wide variety of techniques available, the best method may have been created thousands of years ago. It’s recently been discovered that the Aboriginal people of Australia had their own memory technique, long before you could note it down on an iPad. This method is over 50,000 years old and was shown in a recent study to be more effective than the memory palace technique.

The Aboriginal people are highly in tune with the landscape that surrounds them. Rather than using a palace, then, they will attach information that they need to remember to this landscape. A concept could be connected to a tree, a rock, or a plant. They go further than this, though, solidifying the memory by telling a story about the landscape. The Aboriginal people know better than most about the power of storytelling. Once a fact is rewritten as a story connected to nature, it becomes firmly cemented in the mind.

This technique was tried out among medical students. The research was carried out by Dr. David Reser, of the Monash University School of Rural Health, and Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta, of Deakin University’s NIKERI Institute. Medical students need to remember more than most because they must quickly recall information about bits of anatomy, plus the causes of and cures for diseases. The study confirmed that students using the Aboriginal storytelling technique could remember information more easily and accurately than those using the memory palace technique, despite the latter being invented many thousands of years later by the Ancient Greeks.

One company that understands the power of ancient Aboriginal traditions is Welcome To Country. They organize tours into the Australian outback in which tourists can meet, interact with, and learn from Aboriginal people. There is so much rich mythology that surrounds this culture and much of it is still valuable today. If you’re interested in booking an Aboriginal tour, then head to Welcome To Country.

Most people wish they had a better memory, especially as they age. Modern science is incredibly important because it helps us to study the mind, understand how it works, and then compare different memory techniques to see which one is best.

However, it seems that the best memory techniques aren’t being developed by modern scientists using the latest technology but rather these methods have existed for tens of thousands of years. For the ancients, memory was a matter of survival. It’s no wonder, then, that they were able to develop some incredibly sophisticated and effective memory techniques.

Source: SciTech Daily.