[user104658]

One thing that IS fascinating in terms of "past lives" though and something that we still know very, very little about is genetic memory which is quite fascinating really. Nothing is born a blank slate; even humans (pretty useless at birth), we still reflexively know how to breathe, swallow, seek out a nipple... even swim.

You can see it VERY clearly in other animals - many mammals can walk from birth, monkeys know how to cling to their parent. Spiders "know" how to construct extremely intricate webs, no practice required.

So there ARE elements of memory that are coded directly into genetic code before there's any physical structure at all to hold them, there's no question about that. How it works? Still mostly an unknown. IN THEORY could living memories be inherited from an ancestor? Who knows. It wouldn't be reincarnation of course, the memories wouldn't be from someone you "were" after they died, they'd be a copy of who they were at the point of passing on their DNA, if such things are possible at all. That I suppose would be indistinguishable from actually "being that person in another life". You might just be borrowing a snippet of a great-great-great-grandparents memory.