![]() ![]() ![]() Important geographical knowledge, medical knowledge, sacred knowledge and moral instruction had to be remembered, passed on from mouth to ear.īards in India today can still recite the tens of thousands of verses of the great Sanskrit epics through song, or chanting this has always been the preliterate human way, from Homer to the Rain Dreaming. ![]() Of course, music plays many other parts in our lives besides that of a memory aid - as social adhesive, as religious liturgy, as consolation, as revelation, as a fun way of passing the time - but a key common quality of most poetry and music seems to be its unforgettableness and in preliterate societies remembering poems or songs could be a matter of life and death. These stories are perhaps the least astonishing in this compilation of neurological "believe it or nots", case-studies that themselves stick in the reader's mind, as if they were also set to music. Sacks documents a few unfortunates in whom a melody can last weeks and seriously jam normal brain functioning. ![]()
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