What is "Ancestral Memory"?

Bill Nye the Science Guy (hey, you take your info where you can find it) states there are four (4) types of memory:
[ul]
[li]Short-Term Memory[/li][li]Long-Term Memory[/li][li]Eidetic Memory[/li][li]Ancestral Memory[/li][/ul]

The first two are self-explanatory and the third can be easily looked up. But what is ancestral memory? And can anyone give me an example of this?

:slight_smile:

Ancestral memory is basically what’s there at birth i.e. natural instincts. However most of what’s said about ancestoral memory is BS.

What MC Master of Cermonies said.

There a two schools of thought:

  1. Ancestral memory = instinct (in which case the word “instinct” is preferable and less confusing.

  2. Ancestral memory includes memories of past lives, tribal rituals, or whatever mysticism the proponent is selling.

Yes, the second one is the one that gets talked about the most and is for the most part new age BS.

I guess this could also fall in with the “1) Ancestral memory…” as posted above by Desmostylus.
Or maybe it’s all in the genes!

A genetic tendency to be musical? Or mathematic?

You know, all that “it runs in the family” type of stuff.
:slight_smile: Is it a result of our environment, or did we already have the knack?

I play music by ear. It’s painful…
(okayokay I stick to my day job then!)

On an aside…
If someone can tell me why I only drew bears as a child, and NEVER people (True! - Unless it was people represented as bears), I’d be delighted to know! I can’t for the life of me remember why this was the case.

(I was a bear in a former life? My Teddies were mind-controlling me? An ancestor was a bear? I was a junior arctophile? :eek: Gentle Ben, come back! Loved that show…)
:wink:

P.S.
Doh! Silly newbie I am.
Please ignore the bear stuff in my above post, I can see it’s perhaps not suited to the General Questions area… And I found belatedly that editing cannot be done on one’s post.

Apologies!

Don’t worry, Tblue. You’ll get the hang of it.

I’m new too, and people have been pretty tolerant of some really stupid mistakes that I’ve made.

Keep at it.

Thanks Desmo’ :slight_smile:

Back on track…

Ancestral memory - I suspect that if genetics plays a role in our inherited “gifts” and “curses”, then Ancestral Memory could be said to be a very long surviving genetic trait.

Physical traits are inherited, so why not mental ones?

But when you go looking into the realm of “Affinity” (Cat people and Dog people might be a good example of this!) what then?

It could be about personality type… but even that had to come from somewhere. Inherited from the parents? The surroundings grown up in? Experiences with both types of animal? Genetics again?
Using myself as an example, what is it that inclines me to collect historic weapon replicas of one era, yet have no desire to collect that of another?
(BtW, this is not a superficial “image” interest.)

What narrows my choice to such specifics?
Knowledge of my past?
(Salient aspects of which were unknown to me, until a couple of years into this hobby.)

Hunches, Feelings, Instincts that “feel” right. What is the basis for this “intuition”?
(And what of “intuition”! Instinct? Perhaps just that ol’ Ancestral Memory kicking in… :slight_smile: )

Clearly, very few ancestors liked the Brussels Sprout. This is why children will not eat them. It’s instinctive! :wink:

Just to concur with most of the other posters, ancestral memory (as far as it verifiably exists) is whatever you know because you were more or less “programmed” to know it by evolution. For instance, people may be afraid of snakes, spiders, heights, or small spaces even if they never had any bad experiences with them. I don’t know if I’d want to call this “memory.” There’s a very different causal story behind it. But if Bill Nye says so. It is information about things that happened in the past that effects your behavior.

I’m surprised that the Science Guy didn’t include implicit and explicit memory as separate categories. Explicit memory leads to specific recollection, like when you see someone and think “I know him from the restaurant. He was my waiter. He spilled water on the table.” Implicit memory is behind recognition, as in “he looks familiar.” People who see a word too briefly to even be aware of what it says will later be more likely to name that word if they’re asked questions like “tell me a word that starts with a C”. Even people with amnesia can learn with implicit memory.

Ask urban children what they’re afraid of and snakes rate pretty implausibly high on the list.

At least that’s what the evolutionary psychology stuff I read said.