http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5280031

Interesting! Thanks for that.

2500 year old memory tricks discovered in Ancient Greece...that's so awesome!

So far I've found this out:

"In his book, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci , Jonathan Spence writes about a 16th century Jesuit who brought to the people of China a wonderful memory system that had been used in the West since the days of ancient Greece. To improve their powers of retention, people would build memory palaces -- huge imaginary buildings they kept inside their heads. After years of practice, the images would become so vivid that a person could close his eyes and picture his palace as though it were real. Eventually these mental edifices would become impossible to erase.

If an orator wanted to memorize a speech or a tax collector wanted to remember a list of names, he would mentally place each item inside a room in his own personal memory palace. When he wanted to recall the information, he would enter the front door and wander from room to room, retrieving the memories. The palace was a structure for arranging knowledge.

'To everything that we wish to remember, wrote Ricci, we should give an image; and to every one of these images we should assign a position where it can repose peacefully until we are ready to claim it by an act of memory.'"

SOURCE: http://www.santafe.edu/~johnson/palaces.preface.html

I'd definitely like more info. on this memory system if anybody knows anything or has book recommendations.

If you're interested in how far memory feats do go back, check out the links in my post on the history of memory.

For some really good information on memory systems with a large capacity, check out Memory Palace, the Dominic System and SEMMM.

This memory palace that you speak of, it is exactly what Hannibal (the Cannibal) Lechter used. I believe he kept his recipes in there, too.
:hmm:

Thanks a ton for those links Mr. Cram.



Interesting bit of information. It would be cool if I could freak my friends out by saying, "Watch as I display amazing feats of memory using the same techniques as Hannibal Lechter himself..." LOL

Enough about Pi whens pie day?
3.1415926535897932384626433...