People began to value memory as a skill about 2,500 years ago.
That's when the poet Simonides of Ceos discovered a powerful technique known as the loci method.
Simonides realized that it's easier to remember places and locations than it is to remember lists of names, for example.
According to the loci method, if you think of a very familiar place, and visualize certain things in that place, you can keep those things in your memory for a long time.