h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Inherited memories? Hmmmm... interesting thought, Dmitri - especially since my mother experienced the same thing when I took her there several years later.

Come to think of it, why wouldn't stored memories (stored, physically, in a specific section of your brain) be part of the DNA you pass on to next generation?

Why not, indeed? Many cultures believe this to be true.

I swear my dog remembers being treated as a sacred object in Tibetan temples...

Shih-tzu?

Yep. He thinks he should have a silk pillow.

'Come to think of it, why wouldn't stored memories (stored, physically, in a specific section of your brain) be part of the DNA you pass on to next generation?'



Your DNA gets passed on, but mutations only occur when a DNA strand is copied wrongly, or when the sequence is changed due to environmental damage (ie radiation). There is no known mechanism for learned behaviour or memories to be passed into DNA. You've have to look to evolutionary psychology rather than chemical explanations for an answer to that.

Wot, no Lamarckism? How dull.

I don't know how evolutionary psychology would work, but it's interesting. In my case, my grandmother denied hotly her whole life that we were Irish. She'd always claim English, which was utterly untrue in her case. She even told me that you couldn't trust the Irish, they were sneaky.

Now, except for the 'Black Dutch' ladies in the ancestral line (mountain code for 'Red Indians, but don't tell Andrew Jackson'), her forebears were Ulstermen. So a predilection for the air and landscape of the Emerald Isle must have come from somewhere else...

Of course, I haven't tried past life regression...a Jungian might have an answer here......'Search for Bridey Murphy', anyone?