Talk to some of the people in Ioka, and apart from the language, they seem stupid.
Ayla is definitely different from the other citizens of Ioka. Since the frozen flame hasn't taken effect yet, there has to be something else, exclusive to Ayla; dreamstone.
Personally, I think Dreamstone is the Earth's counterpart to the FF.
Maybe the Dragonians advanced by using it. That would explain why Ayla only had one piece of Dreamstone etc.
Maybe magically reactive materials like lavos shell and dreamstone produce changes in the mind. If the reptites/dragonians did advance using dreamstone, it explains why Azala used psychic powers during the fight with Black Tyrano, even when other reptites were restricted to physical attacks. The only question is why the changes were so much greater in Azala than in Ayla.
One possibility is that reptites were Earth's chosen race, so they got more out of the dreamstone's power.
The Dreamstone channals dreams. Not super-earth-power-energy. Elements actually do that. The Frozen Flame, though, does harbor a lot of energy. The Reptites evolved in a slow, long process. The reptites were there before the humans, so it's mentioned in the game. Maybe they were WAY earlier? Seriously, you act like the Reptites evolving into Dragonians was odd. They were a smart race, the kept breeding for 65 million years. Of course they'd evolve! Just like we did, so did they. The Chrono humans, though, didn't evolve. They mutated, their brain has tripled his size. The Dragonians name humans as the porognoy of Lavos. They acuse us but contradict their own bit of history: Humans were there before Lavos, and Lavos had not given birth to them in any kind of way. Just like the dwarves were able to think like a human, just like the Demi-Human mystics and El-Nido Demi-Humans could think like humans, so would human eventually would think like they do. It would take a long time, yes, but they would. The Frozen Flame though, made them three times smarter. It also placed a lot of malice in their heart, in a way "disconnecting" them from the Planet. However, the "connection" was not completly broken, because you can see Marle crying when she sees the world destroyed, or Serge taking the decision to save Schala and the future from doom or even Crono's sacrifice. They all show are humans are not fully the pieces of sh*t the Dragonians made them out to be... Just partially, though.
