If you can use democracy to turn the masses against their own liberty, this is a great triumph. It is the sort of tactic that neo-conservatives use consistently, and in some cases very successfully.

Shadia Drury

The Case of S T Nikos

Racial Memory

Notwithstanding the popular films of cavemen fighting dinosaurs, most people realise that the two varieties of animal were separated by tens of millions of years. Mankind could never have had any direct experience of the terror of the conqueror beasts of so many millennia before. If, then, there is some connection between our fears of snakes and monsters and the dinosaurs, how does it arise? S Tino Nikos had reason to believe the basis was deep in our subconscious. As Jung would say: it is an archetype.

Nikos wrote: "Some psychologists are bold enough to attribute the similarities between the dragons and the dinosaurs to racial memory. Perhaps this is the source of our elemental fears of serpents and monsters. A young chimp will become terrified if it catches sight of a python. A more mature one will find a weapon and malignantly hit any snake on its neck, or, when no weapon it at hand, they will try to flick the snake as far away as possible. This behaviour develops even when the chimps have had no contact with snakes, and even when they have been brought up without a mother. The behaviour is instinctive.

"Instincts are fundamental behaviour patterns coded in the genes. If a baby chimp has an instinctive hatred of snakes, even when it has never seen one before in its life, then why shouldn�t other mammals have an instinctive fear�a racial memory�of the dinosaurs? Plainly there was sufficient time and evolutionary pressure in the 140 million years that the dinosaurs dominated the mammals. Nonetheless, most experts deny it. Even if memories could be coded in the genes, they argue that, in the 65 million years since the dinosaurs ceased to be a threat to the mammals, any previous advantage would have disappeared.

"But is that necessarily true? The point surely about racial memories is that it takes countless years for them to become instilled because such effects are much more subtle and indirect than selection for physical traits. By the same token, they might not be easy to erase. The mammals had faced up to the dangers of the dinosaurs for so long and the experience was so terrifying that natural selection saw to it that those creatures which developed an intrinsic image and fear of the dinosaur were more fitted for survival. The caution that such a primordial fear instilled in a creature might have given it a lasting advantage�a fear and suspicion that was of benefit even in the world of mammals�the lingering remnants of which we still possess deep in our subconscious minds.

"Part of our brain gives us this archaic memory of the dinosaurs. Our brains consist of three parts that developed at different times. The advanced part is the neocortex controlling active thinking, then there is the limbic system which controls emotions, and finally the oldest part is the reptilian complex. The latter is little more than a pronounced nodule at the top of the spine which has survived essentially unchanged since before the age of the reptiles. This very primitive area of the brain is the source of primeval, subconscious ideas.

"Images of dragons are still recorded here and give rise to myths and legends in which the dragon represents inhuman power which has to be tamed or vanquished."

If Nikos is correct in this speculation then it has to be considered that some people might have the ability to recall these racial memories more highly developed than others. Some people have particularly vivid dreams and have irrational night terrors which often require some trouble to allay. We have some reason to believe that Nikos was one of these sensitive people.

Michaela Magi Griffiths, Bloomsbury, September, 1993
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