eli5: Why do most people have no memories from before age 4 or 5 years old?
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There’s something here with trauma (at least anecdotally) at an early age that grants access to earlier memories. My very first memory of being alive is allegedly from when I was 2. At 5-5.5 years old I started getting pretty badly abused by my birth mother and step father. I spoke about a memory I have of my grandpa. He and my Grandma said it’s impossible I was only 2 when that happened. But none the less I have the memories.
There have been studies that show memories are held in our flesh, can and do get passed on to off spring. I think it was a study on epigenetics. In the study mice feet were shocked after a spray of citronella. Their kids after being born we’re exposed to the same stimuli and started freaking out from just the smell no shock. They say that’s why everyone is scared of the dark at some point in life, because huge animals used to eat us at night. ¯|_(ツ)_/¯
So I think we have the access to the memories but on a sub conscious level. Think about it as an operating system (early childhood memories) vs an app (adult memories). While we do see the OS it mainly does stuff behind the scenes while your browser is what you’re actively interacting with?
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