We have to remember a lot more stuff these days just to exist.
We have to know more, but not necessarily remember more.
You don't have to know how to take care of a horse, grow your own food, preserve different foods for the winter, how to get from a hundred places to a hundred other places, or any of the dozens of methods of mending your clothes, or how to clean various dirty things since we now have all-purpose cleaning methods.
People used to have to both know and remember way more than we do today. Today, we mostly just need to know how to search for things online.
I'm sure people back then would have loved a vast information repository on taking care of horses too, and would have farmed external storage of lots of that information off of their minds. And at the same time they were taking care of horses, they were not taking care of whatever vast information processes their job requires.
Oh, and their information likely went stale much more slowly than things we deal with these days.
We have to know more, but not necessarily remember more.
You don't have to know how to take care of a horse, grow your own food, preserve different foods for the winter, how to get from a hundred places to a hundred other places, or any of the dozens of methods of mending your clothes, or how to clean various dirty things since we now have all-purpose cleaning methods.
People used to have to both know and remember way more than we do today. Today, we mostly just need to know how to search for things online.