Question: Has our memory improved as we've evolved or has it got worse?

Melanie Stefan answered on 21 Mar 2011:

That’s a very nice question. I don’t know the answer.

Certainly, our memory has improved from very early evolutionary stages to later ones, simply because the brain got bigger and more complex.

In recent human history, though, I am not sure. Language, and especially written language, has allowed us to “externalise” a lot of our collective memory. If we write something down, we don’t have to remember it, so maybe our capacity of remembering things has gotten a bit worse. Then again, learning to read and write and other such skills that we humans need to find our way through the complex environment that we have ourselves created places significant demands on memory, so maybe it has gotten better. Tricky one, I’ll keep thinking!