Handy Mnemonics - A history of the five-fingered memory machine

A millennium of “hand mnemonics” and the techniques practised by Buddhist monks, Latin linguists, and Renaissance musicians for learning language, teaching music, memorizing systems, or calculating time.

Drawing on paper from Mogao Caves - Image source

"No one knows who made the drawing. Likely the work of an eighth-century monk, perhaps a member of an esoteric Buddhist cult traveling the Silk Road, it long sat forgotten in a walled-off library in China’s Mogao Caves. When the library was uncovered in 1900, the drawing — lifted from a trove of religious manuscripts — had aged well. Its subject is timeless: a pair of human hands."

Read more: Public Domain Review