Conference noted::sf

    In Auel's Neanderthals, racial memory allows them to recall their
    ancestors' knowledge and skills just as if they were their own.
    As I recall, the system was sex-diffrentiated; women could recall
    the memories of their mothers and their mothers' mothers and so
    on, and men could recall along the paternal line.  This was supposedly
    tied in with the Neanderthals' apparently larger temporal lobes
    (known to have something to do with memory retrieval), just as their
    gestural language was related to their larger occipital lobes (where
    the visual centers are).  Cro-Magnons, on the other hand, had larger
    frontal lobes and so used forethought and imagination in place of
    memory.  Auel's Neanderthals were arch-conservatives and did everything
    by precedent.
    
    The only scholarly theory of race-memory I know of is that of Carl
    Jung.  Even there, I am not entirely sure what he means by it. 
    In the more conservative construal, Jung just means that humans
    are instinctively primed to recognize and react to certain stimuli;
    the way newborns recognize smiles is an example, but Jung posited
    subtler and more elaborate instictive recognition mechanisms.  These
    are the basis for his theory of psychological archetypes.  E.g.
    each sex has an inherited abilities to recognize the psychological
    as well as physical characteristics of the other, and these are
    the basis of the anima and animus archetypes.
    
    The more wild-eyed construal is that humanity has an unconscious
    racial mind, absorbing new data as does our personal unconscious,
    not simply evolving over the ages by Darwinian action, as mere instinct
    patterns would.  The dreams from this racial unconscious slop over
    into our personal unconsciouses, and sometimes thence into conscious
    minds.
    
    Consider the way myths and legends have similar plots in widely
    divergent cultures.  It may be that they just have a common literary
    ancestry if you trace the cultures back far enough, but it may also
    be that (on the first construal), these stories evolved by parallel
    evolution from the universal human psychological structure, hardwire
    into the neurons, or (on the second construal) that the tale-spinners
    of all lands draw their inspiration from that deep layerof their
    minds that they hold in common, where the race dreams.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .1:
    
    Expanding a little on Earl's excellent comments --
    
    There are two "race memories" ideas that seem quite prevalent. 
    One is the idea of a sort of linked group-mind of all humanity from
    which people can under certain circumstances extract data or
    experiences: some think the so-called "past life memories" attributed
    to reincarnation are in reality picking up stuff recorded in the
    collective subconscious.
    
    The other is that every person gets a complete [one might say
    Lysenkonian] record of all memories his ancestors had, transmitted
    genetically.  Merritt used in in one of his romances, _Dwellers
    in the Mirage_, if memory serves.  Since far enough back, we're
    all related, it'd be hard to differentiate between the two.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

re: .2
>    genetically.  Merritt used in in one of his romances, _Dwellers
>    in the Mirage_, if memory serves.  Since far enough back, we're
    
What about all the Bene Gesserit in "Dune" also?

    Re .3:
    
    Well, okay, but Merritt wrote _his_ stories in the 1930s.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    You could distinguish physically transmitted racial memory from
    the psychically transmitted kind in a couple of ways.
    
    Presumably you would get no memories from an ancestor after the
    point in time when he or she begets or conceives you or your
    intermediate ancestors.  Specifically, a physically transmitted
    race memory would have few memories from old age and none or very
    few indeed of dying.  If one could get reliable access to race memory
    and found it contained memories of old age and death, that would
    indicate it was not physically inherited.
    
    You'd have similar evidence of a psychic race memory if any of the
    memories could be traced to people who had never had children.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .0:
    
    I'd like to state that that I was wrong in the base note. It was
    Lysenko who proposed the "training" mechanism of evolution, NOT
    Lamarke, as was discreetly and unobtrusively pointed out in .1 by
    Steve Kallis.
                                                   
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    Earl,
    	You seem to be discussing racial memory as a set of available
    specific memories that members of a race might share.  I've always
    thought of it as the phenomona that attempts to explain why different
    cultures with absolutely no interaction between them, seperated
    by distance and time, have many aspects of their culture that are
    so similar as to defy probablility.  Examples often given are the
    shape of the pyrimad as a shrine, used by mayans, egyptians, and
    a few others.  Folk tales about vampires (or related life-draining
    creatures) and other common themes.  Even many aspects of religion,
    especially among cultures who believe in a race of gods, are shared
    by vastly different cultures.  Does this tie in at all with your
    definition?
    
    Your definition of racial memory seems more similar to the one
    described in the Gandalaria Cycle books.  In these books, there
    was an entity called the Unimind (i think) that was a compilation
    of every native of the planet who had ever died.  
    
    /Dan

    Personally, I don't believe in racial memory at all, except as a
    metaphor for human instincts.  When race-memory is put forward as
    a genuine hypothesis in psychology or anthropology, it is generally
    as you describe it, and people don't go into much discussion about
    how well the race-memory records particular facts as compared with
    general trends.
    
    Race-memory in SF, though, tends to be much more explicit, detailed,
    and spectacular.  Auel's Neanderthal's are an example of that.  So are
    the avian creatures in Piers Anthony's "Orn" and the Bene Gesserit
    and suchlike folk from the "Dune" series.
    
    This is similar to the way telepathy in SF is much more explicit
    than telepathy in real life (assuming for the moment there IS telepathy
    in real life).  In real-life anecdotes about telepathy, people merely
    think the same thing at the same time, or get an intuition about
    what someone else is up to.  In SF telepathy, the telepaths often
    seem to have walkie-talkies in their heads, or a wholly different
    sense that allows them to perceive minds and their contents the
    way eyes let you perceive physical objects.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .6:
    
>    I'd like to state that that I was wrong in the base note. It was
>    Lysenko who proposed the "training" mechanism of evolution, NOT
>    Lamarke, as was discreetly and unobtrusively pointed out in .1 by
>    Steve Kallis.

No, you were right.  Lamarke proposed the theory as an alternative 
to Darwinism, but Lysenko was  the Soviet minister (of agriculture?)
who adopted it as a guiding principle and Soviet dogma.

re: .5 - physically transmitted racial memory

Some theories of memory postulate that long-term storage is chemical, 
perhaps in RNA.   If so, then you might pick up some of your mother's 
memories through random bits of RNA floating around in the ovum.  
However, you would not be likely to get anything from your father, since 
the sperm is such a stripped down little beast.  You might also get 
some during pregnancy through the uterus.  Again, though, only female 
memories would come through.  

If this really worked at some time, then teaching things to men would 
be pointless.  They could only transfer learning through crude 
methods such as speech, whereas mothers could transfer it directly.
Women would be put on crash learning programs as soon as they reached 
child-bearing age, so as to move as much data as possible.  Men, 
well, I suppose they're good for throwing sticks at small animals, 
but not much else.

/jlr

    re .10:
    
    > ... If so, then you might pick up some of your mother's memories
    > through random bits of RNA floating around in the [womb]. ...
    > ... If this really worked at some time, then teaching things to men 
    > would be pointless.  They could only transfer learning through crude 
    > methods such as speech, whereas mothers could transfer it directly.
      
    A really demonic suggestion would be to puree the brains of aged
    men (and women) and inject it into the womb. Hoping that the fetus
    would pick up enough RNA to actually learn. 
    
    Similar experiments have been done with (I believe) mice (and
    definitely with planaria). They trained a mouse to run a maze, puree'd
    its brain fed it to an untrained mouse, it was then able to learn
    the maze MUCH faster than normal. The planaria experiment was much
    simpler but even more conclusive.
                                                   
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    I never heard of the experiment with mice, but the experiment with
    planaria was later dismissed.  It turns out the cannibal flatworms
    were following the slime-trails laid down by their comestible
    predecessors.  Once the laboratory glassware was more thoroughly
    cleaned, the RNA effect vanished.
    
    The last theory about memory mechanism I heard involves neurons 
    growing new connections, but I have no idea how well-substantiated 
    this is.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I may have pureed a few memories into goulash here, but I seem to
    recall the first planaria experiments were reported in a journal
    called The Worm Runners' Digest, which later became The Journal
    of Irreproducible Results.
    
    len.
    

    If my own engrams are intact, it worked the other way around --
    the planaria experiments were reported in normal journals, but inspired
    the creation of "The Worm Runners' Digest," which I fondly remember
    for a solemn discussion of the gravitropic behavior of pancakes.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    re .12:  Saberhagen, in THE WATER OF THOUGHT, (recently re-released,
    BTW) transferred racial mem. by the sharing of a fluid taken from the 
    skull of the deceased, quite similar to the brain puree scenario.
    
    (When injested by humans it produced some strange reactions.)
    
    I wonder what part Rac. Mem. has on those who have 'memories' of
    previous lives.
    
    				Don ICEMAN::Rudman

    There was a movie a few years back starring the guy who played Illya
    Killiakin (the other Man-from-U.N.C.L.E.). I can't remember the
    name of the movie but he injected himself with the RNA of a famous
    scientist who had been a Nazi prisoner. Sure enough, the memories
    start coming back of the torture, etc. 
    
    Anybody remember this movie?
                                                   
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    I believe the movie was an adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel
    "Hauser's Memory."  And Illya's last name was Kyuriakin (but probably
    not spelled that way).
    
    Earl Wajenberg

It's also an important plot element in Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun".
A jackal-like beast called an alzebo (is that a real word?) likes to 
eat the newly dead.  If you in turn eat it (suitably prepared, of 
course) you acquire the memories of the deceased.  It's another one 
of the time games that Wolfe likes to play.
/jlr

I'm not sure if it's apropos of this subject, but whatever
happened to the study of memory-enhancing drugs (not RNA!).
At one point magnesium pemoline was being investigated by
the military as a memory-enhancing drug.  Choline and
inositol (+ various B vitamins) are sometimes recommended
to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's Disease (which is
supposed to be a cholinergic memory disorder).

    re:.17 re:.16
    
    Yes, it was a made-for-tv movie based on HAUSER'S MEMORY, but
    the author of the book was Curt Siodmak, not Frank Herbert.
    It's a sequel of sorts to his more well-known DONOVAN'S BRAIN.
    
    And the proper spelling of Illya's last name (at least, proper
    in the way the show transliterated it) is "Kuryakin".
    
    --- jerry

    There was a short story called "I'm Frank".  Which is about a
    mutation that telephatically links offspring to parents.  It's a
    dominant trait and therefore takes over the species.  The memory
    is common and intact across death of individuals.
    
    Anyone remember who wrote it or what collection it appeared in?

    re:.21
    
    Doesn't sound familir to me, and I can't find a reference
    to it in my sf_anthologies_&_collections indexes.
    
    --- jerry

    One of A. Bertram Chandler's books on Capt/Commodore/Admiral
    Grimes involved a recently liberated, and protected, humanoid
    species with "perfect" racial memory; whatever the parents were
    taught, the offspring knew through genetic transmission.
    
    They made the "perfect" slave for an industrial <civilization ?>.

    McConnell, who did the original worm research, published this in
    the Worm Runner's Digest. This research was never replicated, and
    eventually McConnell gave it up. The journal then became The Journal
    Of Biological Psychology, which I believe is still being published.
    I was under the impression that JIR is totally independant of WRD.
    Maybe I'm wrong?
     The mice research was never replicated either, it appears that
    any effect claimed was more a result of statistics than biology.
    It is interesting to note that one paper injected puree'd liver
    from trained mice into naive mice with the same results!!
    

    Jack London (believe it or not) wrote a book called "Before Adam"
    dealing with race memory.  The premise of the story is that a modern
    day man can recount dreams about a young man/ape (a species that had
    just moved out of the trees and had begun living in caves).  Due to the
    "realness" of the dreams, the authenticity, and the fact that he had
    never been out of the city enough to have encountered any animals other
    than dogs and cats, he considered these to be a race memory of a
    previous life.  The dreams started when he was a young boy.  Upon his
    first trip to the zoo he saw his first lion and was absolutely
    terrified of it.  Apparently his race memories had so completely
    transferred into his normal conciousness that he felt his life was
    threatened by being so close to the animal even though it was in a
    cage. 
    
    The race memory here seems to be of the genetic transfer type. He has
    absolutely no memory of anything past a certain point in the life of
    the ancestor; presumably because that ancestor had died.
    
    In "Kampus" (I forget the author), the protagonist in the story leads a
    raid to kidnap a college professor.  When the prof. dies during the
    incident, the students liquify his brain and drink it hoping to gather
    some of the proffessor's knowledge.  This was an interesting "what-if"
    type of book exploring what would have happened if the campus
    revolutions of the 60's had been able to reshape society in it's image.
    There is extensive use of drugs for pleasure and as a means to learn
    (these, like the prof.'s brains really were no more than a placebo), an
    expansion of the sexual revolution, and a great propensity for "doing
    ones own thing" and for "finding one's self". 

    Re "I'm Frank" (back a few):
    
    I read this or a similar story: the mutation occurs in England during
    the midaeval period.  But the Earth is not unified--the New World
    hyper-individual is not meshed with the Old World one.
    
    Can't remember the author or confirm the title, though.
    
    				-jkb