In contrast to the modern view, in the 19th century, biologists considered genetic memory to be a fusion of memory and heredity, and held it to be a Lamarckian mechanism. Ribot in 1881, for example, held that psychological and genetic memory were based upon a common mechanism, and that the former only differed from the latter in that it interacted with consciousness.[6] Hering and Semon developed general theories of memory, the latter inventing the idea of the engram and concomitant processes of engraphy and ecphory. Semon divided memory into genetic memory and central nervous memory.[7]
>Deep DNA memory theories: Can we remember our norse ancestors lives?
http://www.redicecreations.com/specialreports/2006/07jul/DNAmemory.html
Because learning about situations that are necessary for survival of a species are probably saved as a kind of unconscious genetic memory, those fundamental human experiences could be deep down in our DNA somewhere.
Let’s say you have always had a significant fear of bears since you were a child. Even Smokey the Bear and other friendly Hollywood bears could not convince you to regard bears with anything but anxiety and fearful feelings.
Maybe it is possible that deep, deep within your DNA memory banks, your great-great-great-great-grandmother or great-great-great-great-grandfather had a very bad experience with a bear two hundred years ago. Maybe they saw someone be killed by a bear. Maybe they had to climb a tree to save themselves from being eaten by a bear.
Would a life-changing experience like this, resulting in knowledge very useful for survival, possibly be encoded in the DNA and passed on to future generations and you?
If there were a way to go deep down into your mind and consciousness, and into your genetic history, maybe through some kind of altered state like a dream or through some kind of trigger, could you recall and experience that event?
Could you relive and re-experience in some way great-great-great-great grandma’s or grandpa’s harrowing and hair-raising close encounter with a hungry bear two hundred years ago?
What about some similar “peak experience” or life-changing event of an ancient relative five hundred years ago? What about five thousand years ago? After all, we know that at least some part of that history is inside all of us, right in the DNA in every cell of our body, right now.