The History of Memory and Studying

From the earliest oral traditions to modern-day study tricks, the way we study and remember has come a long way. Throughout history, people have been fascinated with how memory works and how to make it better.

Memory Before Writing

Long before our current technology, memory was the primary method for preserving knowledge. In ancient civilizations, knowledge was passed down orally—through stories, poems, and songs. These were normally remembered by using poetic structure, rhyme, and repetition. Additionally, it was during this time that mnemonic devices–memory tricks that help you retain information–were first used.

Ancient Greece and Rome

The ancient Greeks believed trying to memorize everything to be extremely important–the philosopher Plato believed that writing things down would weaken the memory. However, his student Aristotle created and wrote the Laws of Association that explain how we learn and remember things by linking thoughts and ideas. These laws include the law of contiguity, the law of similarity, and the law of contrast.

  

The Romans promoted the method of loci studying technique which is still used often today. It involves imagining a familiar place and placing bits of information in each room. To remember them, you mentally walk through the space in chronological order.

The Middle Ages

In medieval Europe, memory was considered both a mental and moral discipline. Monks and scholars used memory techniques not just to remember important texts, but to analyze and contemplate them. Memory was viewed as an art and was tied to spirituality and meditation, as people believed that memorization could help bring them closer to divine knowledge.

The Enlightenment 

By the 18th and 19th centuries, with the rise of science and psychology, memory began to be studied more systematically. In the late 1800s, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus became well known for his memory research. He tested how quickly people forget information over time and came up with the forgetting curve—a concept that describes the decline in memory retention over time. Ebbinghaus is also known for the discovery of the spacing effect—that spreading out study sessions over time leads to better retention.