I hope everyone realizes that as recently as the 1950s we were still of the impression that the Bible was derived from oral tradition ~ and whole libraries of books were written attacking the Bible as a fable.
The Sumerian texts had been discovered, in part, a number of years before but none of that sunk in until good translations were produced. Then, all at once the Bible didn't look at all that ancient~ kind of a "newcomer" in fact.
The tablets at Ebla were discovered, translated, and names like those of ancient Hebrews began popping up.
Genesis still contains basic instructions for creating a Memory Palace if you wish ~ think of an Ark ~ lots of cages, many levels, a handful of people each with different skill levels ~ that's the first one. Then, there are the genealogies of the prophets, et al ~ very similar to the lists of French Kings that you can use to help you organize historic timelines for your readings.
I think it just now occurred to me why the full set of instructions for using the Memory Palaces wasn't provided ~ e.g. the one for the Garden of Eden was really truncated ~ down to one plant and one critter for example!
It would be contact with writing, and lo and behold, Abram was known to have visited places where Sumerian writing was known and taught. Once you had writing, the discussions of Memory Palaces became less important.
Regarding Abram (Abraham), he apparently traveled from the middle east all the way to Egypt around 1900 BC. I am wondering if the 4,000 year old 2 mile wide crater that was found in the Iraq marshes could have disrupted living conditions enough to encourage such a migration. Of course, the Egyptians also record their disasterous First Intermediate Period around that time (Google: Ipuwer papyrus). In addition around 1900 BC Egyptians from the reign of Sesostris(sp?) were also settled at the east end of the Black Sea. Thus Abram could have encountered several possible sources of writing.
SC: Is there any chance of seeing the first writing (paleolitic) more clearly. This is the second time I have encountered it when you posted, and not being able to see it is very frustrating. Thanks also for the long list of references.