Straight Dope Message Board

[lynne-42]

I have just published a new theory for the purpose of Stonehenge and other ancient monuments around the world. The Memory Codeis all about the incredible memory methods used by non-literate cultures dependent on memory to store all the information on which their survival - physically and culturally - depends.

The Memory Code explains the purpose of monuments including Stonehenge in terms of the imperative for non-literate cultures to memorise the vast amount of information on which their survival depends - both physically and culturally.

After ten years of research, a PhD and academic book, my book for the general reader is finally published in Australia, the US and UK. I am just back from publication in the US and UK where the book is getting a great reaction as it did here in Australia. Discussions and seminars with Neolithic archaeologists in the UK showed that they are taking this theory seriously. Fun times ahead!

I am a science writer and this is a totally rational explanation, endorsed by archaeologists, anthropologists and memory experts.

American edition:
https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Code-S...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

British edition:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Memory-Code...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

Australian edition:
https://www.bookdepository.com/The-M...?ref=grid-view

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Code-t...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

Audible edition:
https://www.amazon.com/Memory-Code-T...oding=UTF8&me=

The Cambridge University Press book which gives the full academic justification of the argument:

https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Pow...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

This is the blurb from the Australian edition:

In the past, the elders had encyclopaedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across the landscape, and the stars in the sky too. Yet most of us struggle to memorise more than a short poem.

Using traditional Aboriginal Australian songlines as the key, Lynne Kelly has identified the powerful memory technique used by indigenous people around the world. She has discovered that this ancient memory technique is the secret behind the great stone monuments like Stonehenge, which have for so long puzzled archaeologists.

The stone circles across Britain and northern Europe, the elaborate stone houses of New Mexico, the huge animal shapes at Nasca in Peru, and the statues of Easter Island all serve as the most effective memory system ever invented by humans. They allowed people in non-literate cultures to memorise the vast amounts of practical information they needed to survive.

In her fascinating book The Memory Code, Lynne Kelly shows us how we can use this ancient technique to train our memories today. 1

[What Exit?]

Good luck with the book, it looks interesting. 2

[lynne-42]

I am embarrassed by the rubbish editing of the OP. Repetition wasn't supposed to be there. And I am supposed to be a writer. Oh well! 3

[Amateur Barbarian]

Looks interesting! None of the links is specific about your doctorate or field, though... can you elaborate? 4

[lynne-42]

That's a hard question, Amateur Barbarian. Shouldn't be, should it? I hope that you didn't want a brief answer. My full CV is on my website, but here is an attempt to explain what my supervisor says was creating my own field. I am still not sure what it is.

http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/curriculum-vitae/

Technically my PhD was in the English Program at LaTrobe University in Melbourne. My previous degrees are in Engineering, Education and IT. I was offered a PhD scholarship in creative writing as a science writer to complete a lovely idea for my publisher, Allen & Unwin who had published three popular science books of mine to date. The book was to be about animal behaviour and whether I would see more in the behaviour of the animals I was watching having read the stories of indigenous people - Australian, Native American and Pacific in particular.

It was going wonderfully well until I derailed it. I started realising just how many animals these cultures were classifying. There is a study on the Navajo, for example, which shows they classify over 700 insects to three levels, along with behaviour, habitat and (in a few cases) controlling them as pests, and eating only one. Add in the mammals, birds, amphibians, fish ... how do they do that without writing? Then, I started looking further, especially with Australian Aboriginal cultures and added in memorising all plants (a thousand or so, you can't afford to retest every generation), navigation, genealogies, astronomy, legal system, land management ... the list goes on and on. I derailed my lovely straightforward PhD by asking: How the hell do they do it?

That led the to "primary orality", which I guess is my field, although this is really an information systems theory. Orality is what you have when you don't have literacy. That is a branch of sociology (in which I had no background) about the memory methods used by cultures which have absolutely no contact with writing: song, dance, story, mythology, epithets, conceptual metaphors ... lots of stuff to make information more memorable. But that led me to the way oral cultures use physical memory aids as well - the landscape, skyscape, art and handheld objects - something not in the body of research on primary orality.

Objects such as the African lukasa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lukasa_(Luba)) - I held one for the first time a few weeks ago at the Brooklyn Museum - there are none in Australia. Amazing feeling! I started finding memory devices everywhere, but the big stumble was on the way Aboriginal songlines (sung tracts of landscape) acted as more than navigation aids, they also acted as a set of subheadings to the knowledge system. I then started finding them everywhere as well - Native American pilgrimage trails, Inca ceques, Pacific Island ceremonial roads and so on.

By this time I had derailed my thesis fairly massively. But it got worse. My husband had just qualified in archaeology. We both went back to university as mature age students. I was in England researching various cultural objects at museums when he insisted we visit Stonehenge. I had no background in archaeology either. I immediately imagined how it was set up and constantly changed as a memory palace, adapted over 1500 years or so exactly as I would have predicted in the transition from mobile hunter-gatherer culture to a sedentary farming society.

Long story short - I was wildly excited for about 10 minutes, then self-doubt set in - how could I possibly have a new theory for Stonehenge? Years of self-doubt, checking, expanding, a PhD thesis, a Cambridge University Press book from the thesis and I was ready to write the book for Allen & Unwin which had only a germ of the original proposal. That is The Memory Code.

I have just got back from the US and UK including meetings with Neolithic archaeologists. No-one has yet faulted the theory - it goes into all the details of the archaeology including ditch profiles and pottery distributions - lots of things that no previous theory can explain. All terribly pragmatic. But as it was a general theory about non-literate cultures and the transition to farming, it had to work for all monuments in that phase - so I had to look at monuments across the world and non-literate cultures world wide. Ten years of my life in obsessive research!

So now I go public and I already have lots of emails from readers seeing the ideas work for sites I haven't considered and implications for a range of fields including education (back to my home territory), memory in literate cultures, architecture ... fun times ahead!

Sorry for such a long answer. I don't know what field I am in. I am just going to keep working in it, whatever it is. 5

[HoneyBadgerDC]

This is one of the most facinating things I have run across in a long long time. I plan to order your book right away. I love how you created a new field with this an am confident your work will be recognized for many years to come. I normaly have trouble getting through long posts and tend to scan them. I couldn't get enough of yours. Great work and looking forward to reading your book. 6

[lynne-42]

Thank you so much, HoneyBadgerDC. Your comment is hugely appreciated. I'd love to hear how you react to the book as well. 7

[Darren Garrison]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

I am a science writer and this is a totally rational explanation, endorsed by archaeologists, anthropologists and memory experts.

Can you give some citations for this? I've done some extensive googling and haven't been able to turn up a single academic mention of your book or hypothesis (which some Amazon links say was published on 22 June 2016?).

(To be up front, I'm very deeply skeptical of your Stonehenge premise.) 8

[Darren Garrison]

Oh and is there any particular reason that you went straight to a popular press route without publishing in the relevant academic journals? (As you may know, this isn't exactly a well-regarded path for primary science.) 9

[lynne-42]

Delighted that you are skeptical, Darren and asking exactly the same questions I would of someone else making this claim. Thank you!

As indicated in my OP, I didn't go straight to the popular press. After the PhD was examined, I published the monograph with Cambridge University Press. I couldn't get this published in journals during the PhD thesis as it doesn't fit in any discipline. It needs a great deal of anthropology before you get to the archaeology - too much for the journal article word lengths. The indigenous memory systems are actually attracting more attention than Stonehenge. Interdisciplinary work is not well represented by academic journals when you look closely at them. As the journal editors I have spoken to since have said: you bypassed us by getting it published by CUP.

It was published, after extensive review by their chosen archaeologists, by Cambridge University Press in 2015 as an archaeology monograph. Can't get much higher academic recommendation than that.

https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Pow...sap_bc?ie=UTF8

On the British link, they do quote some of the endorsements: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Memory-Code...ds=Lynne+Kelly

When it comes to Stonehenge archaeologists, you don't get much higher up the tree than Dr Ros Cleal:

Dr Kelly has developed an intriguing and highly original account of the purpose of Stonehenge, Avebury and other stone monuments; the depth and breadth of her research, and the experimental experience she has brought to her study, command respect and invite serious attention. -- Ros Cleal, author of STONEHENGE IN ITS LANDSCAPE

This is part of the longer endorsement in the book from Australian archaeologist, Iain Davidson, who was also one of the examiners:

Takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the past and around the world... An engaging and exciting read. -- Iain Davidson, Emeritus Professor, University of New England

I have listed the various experts and their comments on my website, which includes US archaeologist William D Lipe, the independent international PhD examiner, as I use Pueblo knowledge systems and the Ancestral Pueblo site of Chaco Canyon, on which Lipe is an authority.

http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/the-memory-code/

The 22 June 2016 date is the publication of the Australian edition. The US and UK editions came out in February 2017. I didn't think it was worth putting the Australian edition on Marketplace last year as the majority of Dopers are American and wouldn't have access to it.

The formal skeptical organisations have been hugely supportive. As the author of "The Skeptic's Guide to the Paranormal" and a founding member of the Australian Skeptics, skepticism is in my blood. In fact, it is that hard core rationalism which led me to the theory. That is why there are so many skeptics groups on my public talks list:

http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/speaking-engagements/

I used the skeptics to ask every hard question they could during the near decade-long process of developing the theory.

Not sure how good your googling is. My university published about it:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/artic...for-stonehenge

There are lots more links. But that will do for now. I would be delighted to respond to your skepticism when you have read the theory. 10

[Chronos]

I think the biggest error in assigning a purpose to Stonehenge is in assuming that it had a single purpose. It surely had many, for the many different cultures who build and added to it, and we already know at least some of them. 11

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by Chronos

I think the biggest error in assigning a purpose to Stonehenge is in assuming that it had a single purpose. It surely had many, for the many different cultures who build and added to it, and we already know at least some of them.

Exactly. That is a really important point. Major indigenous gatherings had a multiplicity of purposes, including trade, finding partners, having fun ... which I acknowledge constantly in the book. Stonehenge was a ceremonial site, and one significant purpose of non-literate ceremonial sites in for the maintenance and transmission of pragmatic (and spiritual) information. I concentrate on the pragmatic while acknowledging that the two are intermeshed.

I'm not sure what you mean by different cultures - there is a continuity in the archaeological record as it changes constantly over the 1500 years of use, but there is definitely lots of external influence. Whether it was the technology and concept which was adapted from elsewhere or the people who moved and brought it with them is very much a matter of debate among archaeologists and I shall leave that to them.

When I talk about knowledge systems, that includes astronomy, burial / ancestral stories, place for healers ... all the current theories (other than ley lines, aliens and wizards). So I am not disagreeing with any of them. Knowledge systems just include a lot more genres of information. I have added them in and the memory methods needed to maintain the vast store of information. But much of the actual archaeology, including the structure of the ditch, the changes in the stone arrangements and so on, perfectly serve the mnemonic requirements of a non-literate memory system, while not really being necessary for the current theories. For example, the huge effort required for the Stonehenge ditch, and then even more so for the Durrington Walls ditch (estimated at a million work hours) - and the effort to make the bases of the ditches flat - can't be justified for other purposes currently granted. It is essential to include what the archaeologists consider the Stonehenge landscape which is way more than the small area of the main monument, and critically includes the superhenge and associated features at Durrington Walls.

And then you need to consider that in the context of 1000 stone circles all over the British Isles. And then in the context of monuments the world over which were built in the transition from mobile (not nomadic) to settled communities. It is that transition which dictated the need for mnemonic ceremonial spaces. And that takes a whole book to explain! 12

[septimus]

Congratulations, lynne-42 ! I'm definitely going to read your book; the only reason I've not ordered already is that I want to be clear on the relationship between The Memory Code and Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. I'm pretty sure I'll just read the former, but want to know what I'd be missing.

I read the parts on-line at amazon; not only is your topic very interesting to me but the writing is clear and fun to read. I thought it funny why your husband felt a trip to England would save money!

One complaint that seemed quite wrong was "What on Earth would [the builders of Stonehenge] need to memorise anyway?" Genealogy is one easy example. Celtic inheritance uses an indfhine system involving six levels of ancestry, and there is reason to believe this system is quite ancient. 13

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by septimus

Congratulations, lynne-42 ! I'm definitely going to read your book; the only reason I've not ordered already is that I want to be clear on the relationship between The Memory Code and Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. I'm pretty sure I'll just read the former, but want to know what I'd be missing.

Thank you, septimus. I'd love to hear your reaction to the book. I would recommend only The Memory Code unless you have a specific academic interest in one of the fields: prehistoric archaeology, orality or indigenous knowledge systems. Knowledge and Power is the fully cited academic version with lots of brackets with references in them and formal language. It was essential to establish the credentials of the claim. It is organised as an academic archaeology monograph. It has lots more detail on the actual archaeology, but less sites and little of my own story or the way I implement the memory systems. I have added Easter Island and the Nasca Lines more fully to The Memory Code. Knowledge and Power includes a lot more of the theoretical background on primary orality - the body of research on the way oral cultures function in terms of communication and knowledge. The other significant difference is that Knowledge and Power gives in-text references for almost everything I say and a bibliography. I have put the bibliography of over 800 items on my website, sorted according to topic and updated for the extra topics covered in The Memory Code.

http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/bibliog...e-memory-code/

If you get really hooked, maybe then try Knowledge and Power, but I don't think anyone who is not an academic in one of the related fields would need it after The Memory Code. It is just nice to know that it exists and the claims in The Memory Code aren't just wild imaginings on my part. 14

[kaylasdad99]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

I am embarrassed by the rubbish editing of the OP. Repetition wasn't supposed to be there. And I am supposed to be a writer. Oh well!

Nah, you get a pass. As you point out, you're a writer, not an editor... 15

[HoneyBadgerDC]

I have started on your book, your energy and personality shine through in your writing. hard to stay on topic sometimes as I find myself falling in love with the author! I hope to finish it this week, I am thoroughly enjoying it. 16

[lynne-42]

I am flattered! Thank you! I hope the rest of the book convinces you that there is another way to look at the monuments by assuming that the builders had an intellectual life.

Thank you also for starting my day way over here in Australia with such a lovely comment. 17

[septimus]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

Thank you, septimus. I'd love to hear your reaction to the book....

I've just started Chapter 5 — I'm reading the book slowly to savor it — but will post my initial reactions now. I am very impressed, both with your new theory and your enjoyable writing style. Anthropology is way outside my scholastic training and my career, but in retirement I've developed a fascination with human prehistory. I don't have useful creative insights myself, but I think I have good intuition, and in your writing I intuit a strong "ring of truth." (I haven't decided whether I'll attempt to create my own "memory space" — I'm sure I would, if not already in my late 60's.)

Barry Cunliffe introduced me to the idea that elites valued knowledge as much as or more than material wealth. Your observation that mythologies contain factual knowledge not apparent in the uncommentated versions for children helped connect some missing dots in my other readings.

(Some of your examples remind me of my wife, a country girl! She knows many hundreds of different plants, with medicinal and nutritional information, mostly not learned from books. She can't distinguish variety of trees by the sound wind makes(!) but, listening to our dogs bark, can distinguish a dozen different causes from the sound.)

Well done, Lynne! 18

[lynne-42]

Hi septimus. Thank you for the update. It is hugely appreciated.

Why not start a memory space? I am in my mid-sixties and adding to my various memory spaces every day. I am now in training for the Australian Memory Championships. That's a bit different because it's cards and numbers and words to be stored temporarily rather than permanent useful information. I am not aiming to take out the championship against the serious memory athletes, but I do hope to do well in the Senior category.

I have way over a thousand active locations in my memory palaces - and then there are all the locations on portable devices. My various experiments are described here:

http://www.lynnekelly.com.au/memory-experiments/

I was already in my 60s when I started my first memory palace. It works a treat!

Love to know if you try it!

Lynne 19

[Exapno Mapcase]

By coincidence, my wife and I have just read Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages, by Alex Wright, which starts with indigenous methods of classifying information and progresses on to memory rooms before getting to more modern versions of libraries and encyclopedias. We'll have to look at your book for a deeper view into the subject. 20

[septimus]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

I was already in my 60s when I started my first memory palace. It works a treat!

Love to know if you try it!

I may accept the challenge. If I decide to post about it, I'll start a new thread in Mundane Pointless. I'll use 120 trees on a short walk, mapping them first to 120 years (1901 to the near future). First I'll want to learn and memorize the names (both Thai and English) of the tree varieties. (My wife likes this plan since she loves her trees!)

But I'm unclear on the method. When you initially learn, e.g. the elements in the periodic table, do you carry a book or printout of the list on your walk? My inclination is to get lots of help from paper, pencil and even computer — but I don't want to violate the spirit of the method. 21

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

By coincidence, my wife and I have just read Glut: Mastering Information through the Ages, by Alex Wright, which starts with indigenous methods of classifying information and progresses on to memory rooms before getting to more modern versions of libraries and encyclopedias. We'll have to look at your book for a deeper view into the subject.

Thank you so much for pointing me to Glut. My theory is an information systems theory. It is about the mechanisms used to structure and store the massive amount of knowledge which oral cultures store in order to survive. I noted on my quick look on Amazon that Glut refers to the Inca khipu / quipu, the knotted cord mnemonic device. I have been able to find a huge range of mnemonic devices used by indigenous cultures and have started using copies to store information. I am also using my version of a khipu. It is a really enjoyable set of experiments which surprised me just how effective they are.

With some fellow educators, we are now exploring (with a government grant) how these technologies could be used in schools to enhance (in no way replace!) contemporary learning. Fun times ahead!

I would be really interested in your response to The Memory Code in the light of your reading of Glut. 22

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by septimus

I may accept the challenge. If I decide to post about it, I'll start a new thread in Mundane Pointless. I'll use 120 trees on a short walk, mapping them first to 120 years (1901 to the near future). First I'll want to learn and memorize the names (both Thai and English) of the tree varieties. (My wife likes this plan since she loves her trees!)

But I'm unclear on the method. When you initially learn, e.g. the elements in the periodic table, do you carry a book or printout of the list on your walk? My inclination is to get lots of help from paper, pencil and even computer — but I don't want to violate the spirit of the method.

Please accept the challenge! I would really enjoy being part of a discussion on memory methods in Mundane Pointless. Could you message me if you do start it in case I miss it?

I should have mentioned about starting. We can't use the pure method as oral cultures do because we are literate and we don't have elders to teach it to us. I do write out the first level - so the list of tree names in your case, the list of chemical elements in mine - and then add them into the journey locations.

I can see no reason to avoid pencil and paper, computers or anything else. We live in that world.

Once I have the base list in, though, I find I rarely write the next layers down. So, for example, the device I use as the basis for my field guide to the 412 birds of my state is based on the African memory board known as a lukasa. I started with the list of the birds in taxonomic order and the scientific names of the families. I attached all species to the board and in memory. I don't need my lukasa with me any more because I know it so well. But as I add more information about each bird (I may read it or hear it when out birding ...) I just add it to the story I have attached to that bird. I tend to have a story for each of the 82 families then the individual species / characters within each story, and then constantly enhance those stories. So the entire bird guide is not written down, only my initial list.

Interestingly, the bird guide in my head is coming out notably different from the books we have. I suspect the same will happen with you and the trees. For each bird, the books have full descriptions and calls and everything about each. I find I am encoding the identifying features only. I am adding calls for the birds who we hear call, but not for those which are more often seen silent. I am encoding what birders call the jizz - what makes that bird clearly that bird. The brown treecreeper is often on the ground while the white-throated tree-creeper is more often higher on the trunk - so that comes into the story. I need nothing to identify an emu - they are so distinctive, so my story includes nothing about ID. When it comes to a striated fieldwren, though, I have quite a bit about how to tell it from all the other little brown birds.

I expect with trees you'll do the same. Some are obvious and so you'll encode little. Some are similar, so you'll encode a great deal. I have just started doing our eucalypts and wattles/acacias so will be very interested to hear how you go and join in a discussion.

Does that all make sense? 23

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

Thank you so much for pointing me to Glut. My theory is an information systems theory. It is about the mechanisms used to structure and store the massive amount of knowledge which oral cultures store in order to survive. I noted on my quick look on Amazon that Glut refers to the Inca khipu / quipu, the knotted cord mnemonic device. I have been able to find a huge range of mnemonic devices used by indigenous cultures and have started using copies to store information. I am also using my version of a khipu. It is a really enjoyable set of experiments which surprised me just how effective they are.

With some fellow educators, we are now exploring (with a government grant) how these technologies could be used in schools to enhance (in no way replace!) contemporary learning. Fun times ahead!

I would be really interested in your response to The Memory Code in the light of your reading of Glut.

Glut is a fun little book that glides lightly over an enormous number of subjects. I'm sure you'd find loads of congruent info in it.

I ordered your book. Problem is, I'm in the middle of writing a book myself so I can't promise I'll get to it immediately but I'll take a look as soon as it arrives. 24

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

I ordered your book. Problem is, I'm in the middle of writing a book myself so I can't promise I'll get to it immediately but I'll take a look as soon as it arrives.

Are you happy to say what you are writing - I'd be very interested. I know that when I am writing I have no interest in reading anything that is not directly related to what i am working on. 25

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by lynne-42

Are you happy to say what you are writing - I'd be very interested. I know that when I am writing I have no interest in reading anything that is not directly related to what i am working on.

I'm writing the history of robots in popular culture. Amazingly enough, that's never been done before. Robots have appeared in all genres, books, stories, comic books and strips, movies, radio, television, along with their myriad mentions in popular science, which demonstrably influenced their fictional appearances.

This was literally a chapter from a larger work looking at the ways people created a literal Future out of the rise of technology in the age of electricity. I extracted this piece for a starter book. It will be published by McFarland's. That's the connection with Glut, since information systems, shorthanded as computers, are a core part of that Future in popular culture. I've been posting associated material, mostly lighter stuff, at my website, Flying Cars and Food Pills.

Yes, the amount of reading and viewing for this is overwhelming but I reserve 20-30 minutes each morning and evening for pleasure reading so I can go through a few extra books a month. I'll have to wait until I see your book before I can decide whether it can be broken into small chunks or needs concentrated attention to do justice to your argument. 26

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

I'm writing the history of robots in popular culture. ...

Thank you! That all sounds really interesting. What a great discovery to make that it hasn't been written before. It is great that you have a publisher as well.

I had a look at your website and it is really interesting - sound like things are going very well. Please post here in Marketplace when the book is published. 27

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

Well, as a fan of archaeology and prehistoric sites as long as I can remember, I'm intrigued. I just bought the kindle edition and look forward to giving it a go. 28

[lynne-42]

Originally Posted by IvoryTowerDenizen

Well, as a fan of archaeology and prehistoric sites as long as I can remember, I'm intrigued. I just bought the kindle edition and look forward to giving it a go.

Thank you. I look forward to your response. 29