My Memory is a Fearsome Instrument. It’s Evolution that Sucks

I cannot remember the names of people I have known for 30 years. When parking my car on the street, I now write down the location. After misplacing my kitchen shears, I then misplaced the replacement.

Yet, sections of my memory are magnificent. I can recite the words and music to the top 20 pop songs from each year between 1950 and 1964, including such gems as:

Slow Poke, #15, 1952
Doggie in the Window, #3, 1953
Rock and Wall Waltz, #8, 1958
The Purple Eater, #2, 1958
Battle of New Orleans, #2, 1959
Running Bear, #6, 1960
Hey Paula, #5, 1963.

I now question my belief in evolution — from the simplistic “survival of the fittest” to the selfish gene. How could evolution prioritize my memorizing “Running Bear Loved Little White Dove” and “Love Big as the Sky” as more important than locating one’s missing keys? Believers in intelligent design face a bigger problem: God decreed that the Rock and Roll Waltz is more important than the names of fellow Young Earthers.

It is easier to remember music and lyrics than the lyrics alone. I can sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” correctly. Asked to recite the lyrics and I end with Ramparts Last Gleaming.

Still, this does not answer the evolutionary issue. Why did we evolve to clearly remember, at age 83, that 66 years ago we fired once more and they began to runnin’ on down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico? Why did we not evolve more useful musical memory techniques, such as a Beethovenian four-note opening motif for “keys in my pants” or “turn off the stove”?

I wonder if memorizing songs, like having tonsils, was advantageous around 50,000 BCE, but worthless today.

Hunter-gatherer bands typically had 40 to 80 people. Imagine that many of these bands named all males “Paul” and all females “Paula.” A song “Hey Paula” might have alerted them to a present danger such as an approaching pride of lions or being vaccinated for measles.

I think I am onto something. This could be a Ph.D. thesis in eight separate academic departments.