Long before transcription existed, there have been oral records of events in history, genealogies. In Medieval Iceland, law speakers had their entire law committed to memory (Fentress and Wickham, 1992). In medieval Ireland, it took 12 years of study to become a bard, the lowest rank of orator, and then they had over 500 stories committed to memory, as well as genealogies of all the leading Irish families (MacManus, 1967).

The indigenous people of Australia were very familiar with the method of loci. It is believed that their ancestors sung the world into existence (Cambor, 2001). Every rock and crack of the outback has a song associated with it, and the traveler knows exactly their location by their place in the song. Since then, these songs have been transcribed to aid in the understanding of the geology of the continent.

In Ancient Rome, mnemonics were used by lawyers to remember the points they wanted to make in a lawsuit. The method of remembering they used is called the method of loci. The method of loci was first formally described by Quitilian, a first century Roman rhetorician. The first documented benefit of this method is found in the book “The Art of Memory” by Francis Yates, where she recounts the story of a poet, Simonides.

Simonides was invited to a dinner party to recite a poem in praise of the host, Scopas. During his recital, Simonides also included a passage praising the gods Castor and Pollux. Scopas was not pleased by this and refused to pay Simonides the full amount he was due. Just then a messenger came in and told Simonides that there were two men waiting for him outside. He went outside and found no one there. Just then the roof of the dining room collapsed, killing everyone inside. The bodies were so badly mangled that they couldn’t be identified. Simonides though was able to recall where each of the guests had been sitting.

According to Yates, the quest for improved memory through artificial mnemonic systems emerges as a critical part of our attempt to organize knowledge and impose an understandable order on a chaotic world.

It wasn’t until the printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg in the early 1450’s that memory techniques started to lose their prominence. People were then able to record history, genealogies, law codes and stories without committing them to memory.

Today mnemonics are mostly used as a tool for remembering sequences of information, especially for recall in test situations, but also in everyday tasks like reciting phone and PIN numbers. It is no longer necessary to memorize entire texts due to advancements in modern technology.

Perhaps this modern resistance to memorization masks an anxiety caused by a diminished sense of our own mnemonic capabilities (Cambor, 2001).