An atavistic memory of his mother's womb?

The sign "No Trespassing" exerted a strange fascination - even today it's a complex signifier that stirs ancient, atavistic memories.

Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes stunned Paris in 1909 with barbaric warriors leaping to the score, and B and B banked on some atavistic memory connected with steppes as well as steps.

Now, suddenly, he realized that it must be some atavistic memory of days when all spiders lived in dusty corners.

He says the dog "makes a statement" by habitually relieving itself in front of No. 16 and never in front of No. 18, perhaps out of some atavistic canine memory.

Whales, too, can sometimes be spotted out at sea, although they keep their distance from the bay, maybe because of an atavistic memory of the whaling done from here from 1954 to 1962.

Spare also believed in what he called "atavistic resurgence", the idea that the human mind contains atavistic memories that have their origins in earlier species on the evolutionary ladder.

P. D. James Salem, Mass., March 17, 1985 I came to Salem half expecting a city still darkened by the memory of old cruelties, old terror, and that atavistic memory is, indeed, still potent.

Tiki also stirs powerful, atavistic memories among many New Yorkers.

Was there some atavistic memory at work here?