atavism

Millet plays with the title and with the idea of atavism, in which an ancient trait asserts itself by skipping forward a few generations to suddenly appear in the gene pool.

If you don’t agree with them then you’re an ignorant, misogynistic and probably racist atavism.

Democrats treated patriotism as an unpleasant atavism that we need to get over.

They think illiberal authoritarianism — “made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science,” to quote Winston Churchill — is the wave of the future, not an atavism from the past.

A fervent believer in atavism, he was particularly drawn to the fine-tuned measurement of the skull as an indicator of the savage proclivities of man.