Nasca lines – Lynne Kelly

The Memory Code – Public lectures – US/UK

Thank you to those who have been asking about public lectures on my book tour for the publication of the North American edition of The Memory Code by Pegasus Books and the UK / Europe edition from Atlantic Books. There are lots of meetings and other exciting things happening, but below are the public events booked so far.

New York: Note that two events were advertised at the same location, different titles, an hour apart. I am not sure if it is two lectures or one! I’ll fix it here when confirmed. IT IS ONE LECTURE AT 3 PM.

Saturday 11 February, New York Public Library: Stonehenge and Other Strange Places, 3:00 pm,
https://www.nypl.org/events/programs/2017/02/11/stonehenge-and-other-strange-places also advertised as:

Saturday 11 February, New York City Skeptics: A Skeptic Tackles Stonehenge: The Memory Code, 3.00 – 5.00 pm, Jefferson Market Library.
https://www.facebook.com/events/211380229314876/

Washington DC:

Wednesday 15 February, National Capital Area Skeptics: A skeptic tackles Stonehenge: The Memory Code, 7:30pm. Rockville Library.
http://www.ncas.org/2017/01/february-15-rational-approach-to-oral.html

Thursday 16 February, American Institute of Architects: The Memory Code and the foundation of architecture. A limited number of public seats will be available. http://www.aianova.org/event.php?eventID=1436

Nottingham:

Wednesday 22 February, University of Nottingham: Indigenous memory and Stonehenge – yes, there is a link, Workshop and public lecture.

Workshop: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lynne-kelly-memory-workshop-tickets-31219799260

Lecture: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lynne-kelly-lecture-indigenous-memory-stonehenge-yes-there-is-a-link-tickets-31219661849

Thursday 23 February, Cardiff University: The Memory Code, Archaeology seminar. This is an in-house seminar for the archaeology department, but there may be an opportunity for other archaeologists to attend. Please contact me for more information.

Monday 27 February, Fortean Society, London. Monumental memories: Indigenous memory and Stonehenge. The Bell, 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX.
Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East. 7.45. Bookings: http://forteanlondon.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/monumental-memories-indigenous-memory.html

Thursday 2 March, Gravesend Skeptics in the Pub, Monumental Memories: No. 84 Tea Room and Eatery, 84 Parrock Road, Gravesend, Kent, DA12 1QF
http://gravesend.skepticsinthepub.org/Event.aspx/10216/Monumental-Memories-a-Skeptics-Extra

I know some people are coming from further afield for the London events. I will have dinner beforehand in a nearby restaurant to meet up with them. Please let me know if you wish to be included.

The Memory Code – Pegasus Books

cover-tmc I am delighted that the Pegasus Books edition of The Memory Code is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com. Pegasus is publishing for North America (US and Canada) while Atlantic Books are publishing for the UK and Europe. Both are using the same cover and publishing initially in hardback. This is so exciting!

These editions follow the Australian edition from Allen & Unwin.

The blurb from the book says:

The discovery of a powerful memory technique used by our Neolithic ancestors in their monumental memory places―and how we can use their secrets to train our own minds

In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem.

Using traditional Aboriginal Australian songlines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world. In turn, she has then discovered that this ancient memory technique is the secret purpose behind the great prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge, which have puzzled archaeologists for so long.

The henges across northern Europe, the elaborate stone houses of New Mexico, huge animal shapes in Peru, the statues of Easter Island―these all serve as the most effective memory system ever invented by humans. They allowed people in non-literate cultures to memorize the vast amounts of information they needed to survive. But how?

For the first time, Dr. Kelly unlocks the secret of these monuments and their uses as “memory places” in her fascinating book. Additionally, The Memory Code also explains how we can use this ancient mnemonic technique to train our minds in the tradition of our forbearers.

The Memory Code – Table of Contents

cover-The-Memory-Code-400

The Memory Code is often referred to, by those asking me about it, as ‘your Stonehenge book’. I have no doubt that the ideas about the purpose for Stonehenge will attract much of the attention, but it is only one chapter in 12. So I have put the Table of Contents below so you can see the extent of the book. It covers more ground than Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies, but without all the academic justification.

I have had a great deal of contact in recent weeks from the memory community, including memory champions on three continents! I have also been asked to write an academic essay for Rounded Globe on indigenous memory methods and implications for contemporary thinking. It will be titled Grounded: indigenous knowing in a concrete reality and free for all. This is part of the move for academics to communicate beyond the expensive academic journals and paywalls. Taxpayers pay for the research – taxpayers should have access to it.

The Memory Code will be published in Australia by Allen & Unwin in July, and by Atlantic Books in the UK and Pegasus Books in the US early next year. The audio rights have also just been sold, so I’ll update here when all the paper work has been done. Allen & Unwin are working extremely hard on my book, and I am delighted by everything they have done.

THE MEMORY CODE – TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 – Encyclopaedic memories of the elders

Chapter 2 – Memory spaces, large and small

Chapter 3 – Memory spaces in a modern world

Chapter 4 – A journey through time

Chapter 5 – The ever-changing memory spaces at Stonehenge

Chapter 6 – The megalithic complexes of Avebury and Orkney

Chapter 7 – Newgrange and the passage cairns of Ireland

Chapter 8 – The tall stones and endless rows of Carnac

Chapter 9 – The unparalleled architecture of Chaco Canyon

Chapter 10 Giant drawings on the desert floor at Nasca

Chapter 11 Memory spaces across the Americas

Chapter 12 Polynesian navigators create a unique world on Easter Island

Epilogue

The Memory Code

2016 is to be a big year. My next book, The Memory Code, is the culmination of eight years of intense work. To feel that I had the authority to make the claim that I have a new theory for the purpose of enigmatic prehistoric monuments around the world, I needed the peer review of a PhD and then the Cambridge University book, Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies. That is all done.

The Memory Code will be published by Allen & Unwin in July 2016 and later by Atlantic Books in the UK. The book is very different from the academic version. There is obviously less academic referencing. Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon are still prominent, but I have added more about Avebury and Orkney and a whole new chapter on the amazing stone rows and other structures at Carnac in Brittany.

3-IMG_2302-pb-quipu5-1000 — An Inca khipu, a knotted cord memory device

Interestingly, the questions after talks and in emails have often been about the actual memory methods used by indigenous cultures and how to implement them in modern life. Hence Chapter 3, Memory spaces in a modern world, came into being, explaining exactly what it is like to use these methods. I am working on My 25 Memory Experiments constantly and loving it.

The adaptability of the Inca khipu / quipu in my own experiments astounded me. That experience enabled me to better understand how the non-literate Inca managed a vast empire without writing, every bit as powerful as the contemporary cultures in the Americas, the literate Aztec and Maya. So there is now an entire chapter on the Americas, which took a lot more research. The incredible glyphs known as the Nasca Lines deserved a chapter of their own.

P1010758-hill-heads-1000 — Easter Island moai on the side of the mountain. (c) Ian Rowland.

Similarly, it was through further research on the Pacific cultures, that of the Pacific Navigators, the New Zealand Maori and the Rarotongans that I came to understand the critical nature of using genealogies in organising Pacific knowledge systems. That unlocked the purpose of Easter Island’s statues.

These are the chapter headings for The Memory Code:

Chapter 1 – Encyclopedic memories of the elders
Chapter 2 – Knowledge encoded in spaces large and small
Chapter 3 – Memory spaces in a modern world
Chapter 4 – A journey through time
Chapter 5 – The ever-changing memory spaces at Stonehenge
Chapter 6 – The megalithic complexes of Avebury and Orkney
Chapter 7 – Newgrange and the passage cairns of Ireland
Chapter 8 – The tall stones and endless rows of Carnac
Chapter 9 – The unparalleled architecture of Chaco Canyon
Chapter 10 – Giant drawings on the desert floor at Nasca
Chapter 11 – Memory spaces across the Americas
Chapter 12 – Polynesian navigators create a unique world on Easter Island

Stone circles in Jordan – are they memory spaces?

Thank you to all the people who have pointed me to this news story on LiveScience and asked my opinion about whether they are memory spaces in the way I believe the British circles to be. [click on the image for the full story]

Assessing stone circles and other ancient monuments as memory spaces must be made with care. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that all ancient structures which aren’t clearly domestic or defensive served the needs of a knowledge elite. But the Jordanian circles are not like those built in the British Neolithic which I have analysed so thoroughly and am writing about in my books. The Jordanian circles are continuous walls, a few feet high, not a series discrete stones. They had no openings, but people could have just stepped over the wall.

There are eleven ancient “Big Circles” around 400 meters in diameter and many smaller ones across the Middle East. Analysis suggests the circles date to over 2,000 years ago, possibly much longer. Without any reasonably accurate dating, the link to other aspects of the archaeology is speculative, so analysis becomes difficult.

Professor David Kennedy, from the University of Western Australia, is quoted as saying that the ‘purpose of the Big Circles is a mystery. It seems unlikely that they were originally used as corrals, as the walls were no more than a few feet high, the circles contain no structures that would have helped maintain an animal herd and there’s no need for animal corrals to have such a precise shape.’

However, the Big Circle pictured ‘was positioned in such a way that it could give someone standing inside it a “panoramic” view of a basin that would have held crops and settlements’ which ‘may have played an important part in the location of the enclosure’. This degree of reference to the landscape is a useful indicator that it may be a knowledge site.

Another valuable piece of information is that ‘the creations were part of a landscape rich in stone structures’ [which] … ‘come in a variety of shapes, including “Wheels” (circular structures with spokes radiating out); Kites (stone structures that forced animals to run into a kill zone); Pendants (lines of stone cairns that run from burials); and walls (mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for more than a mile — or up to several thousand meters — and have no apparent practical use)’.

I will ignore the Kites, because they have an apparent utilitarian purpose. Without dating showing the Pendants are contemporary with the circles, nor the nature of the burials, I can’t use them at this stage. The walls, being labour intensive structures with ‘no apparent practical use’ are right up the alley my theory likes to trot.

The article also links to other fascinating articles. It refers to the Nasca lines, which will be covered in my next book, Ancient Memory Spaces. These I already know have the whole suite of features I look for in a memory site. The Jordanian stone circles article above also links to another LiveScience article on ‘medicine wheels’ in Jordan:

Tantalising? Oh yes!

So to those wonderful folk who are so interested in my ideas – I only wish I could answer your questions about whether the Jordanian stone circles might fit the pattern for knowledge centres. After a quick check, I fear there is far too little for me available in the literature on these sites to assess. I need to know whether there are signs of public and restricted sites, whether there were individual burials dating from the time the circles were built, what the artefacts found were and whether any match the criteria for portable memory devices. And quote a bit more. But they are certainly on my list to follow up in much more detail!

Thank you for the pointer.