[memorylane]

I listened to a Sean Carrol Mindscape podcast recently concerning Memory Palaces that have been used ubiquitously by ancient peoples. The theory goes that when people started settling down, the did not travel extensively and could no longer effectively use country for the palace in their mind. They therefore made physical objects with distinctive surfaces to serve as the physical part of a memory palace. This is well documented for Australian aborigines and native Anerican peoples who you can just ask. There are no equivalent populations in Europe to ask directly.

Once writing/printing became commonplace these practices were abandoned.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fYhVkbzr60E

Edit: add YouTube link.