The Neanderthal theory makes me think I am not autistic!

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Red hair comes from a specific sort of melanin that's different from the sort that creates hair colors all the way from blonde to black by simply varying in amount. The red pigment is either there or it isn't, and exists both in skin and hair. So, yeah, red-haired people will show differences in their skin tones, too. They'll usually have lighter skin because, if they had darker skin, their hair would also have that darker pigment and be auburn instead of true red.

How do you know they can't? Has that ever been tested? You should check your ammo before you start shooting holes.

[quote="Callista"Those are much more superficial things than the difference between species, though./quote]

The differences in an autistic individual are also much more 'superficial'. It's just a small difference in brain makeup and a lot of other subtle differences.

Branching off from Neanderthals is not the issue. It's the _interbreeding_ that took place much later, *after* the bottleneck you mentioned. It seems that your objections are based on a misperception of the theory. Have you actually read the whitepaper on it?

Here it is in a nutshell:
- Homo Sapiens branched off from Neanderthals.
- Neanderthals lived in areas such as Northern Europe, whilst Homo Sapiens lived further south.
- Because of different living conditions over the next 30,000 years or so, they evolved differently.
- After the ice age, Homo Sapiens started to expand back north, where they encountered Neanderthal.
- Homo Sapiens displaced the Neanderthal people, and drove them to extinction.
- But in the meantime, there was some interbreeding between the two.
- In that way, the different traits that Neanderthals evolved were mixed back into the Homo Sapiens.
- Some of these genes produce what is now known as Autism.

It's sounds simple enough and plausible on a superficial level, but the question is, can that little amount of breeding between Neanderthal and others be enough to cause a lot of Autism thousands of years later? Or, is it more complicated than that? Are there other factors and that is only one, or, are there other factors and that isn't one?

These little Neanderthal genes -Callista is right- by now they would be homo sapien genes. They no longer belong to the Neanderthals but are now considered homo sapien, much like the genes we inherited from little lizards if that is what we evolved from...or some sort of species that were more like penguins first coming out of the sea. There is simply too much Autism to blame it on a few Neanderthal/Homo sapien pairings.

Last edited by ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo on 02 Feb 2012, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't get the appeal of this theory, really... If the genomes of Eurasian homo sapiens and Neanderthals did mix, it was long ago, and since then there has been lots of migration and lots more interbreeding. Those genes, if they still exist, are scattered all over the human population.

Think of what happens when you breed, say, a single wolf into a dog population of, say, two hundred dogs. Now let those dogs breed among each other freely. Wait until you get, oh, about one or two thousand generations. Of course you'll have to enroll your far-future descendants for this project. How much wolf will there be two thousand generations later? And will you be able to tell the descendants of your two hundred dogs (who, by now, have interbred with thousands more other dogs) from the ones that don't have any wolf genes? Probably not. There certainly won't be any observable effect on behavior.

The same is true of cats. A Bengal breeder will tell you that by the fourth generation from its wild ancestor, an Asian leopard cat, a Bengal has a temperament indistinguishable from a domestic cat. And that's four generations. It's been longer than that since the Neanderthals.

You know how it takes about seven shuffles for a deck of cards to become truly random? This is a lot like that. And there weren't seven shuffles; there were more like one or two thousand in the thirty thousand years since Neanderthals died out. Possibly as many as four thousand. And we have a heck of a lot more than fifty-two genes.

It's cool to think that we are still carrying around some genes from our Neanderthal cousins. I like that; it makes me feel connected to history. But I don't think that after so many years, Neanderthal genes actually differentiate one human population from another. Since then, we've gone back to the mean--any genetic bumps caused by the Neanderthal genes have been smoothed out, incorporated into the general human population. Did we claim useful genes from the Neanderthals? Maybe. But if we did, they're our genes now.

This is the first I've heard of this theory, but it's unsettling how similar I look to the reconstructed Neanderthal child at the top of that link. I mean, like, I'm basically an older, more civilized looking replica of that photo.

That said, while it's an interesting theory with some valid points, I wouldn't put much stock in it. No two auties or aspies are alike...in fact, many of the children I've known with autism have had brown hair and brown eyes.

That's because Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens are similar, so much so some have argued they aren't a separate species but more like a race of homo sapiens. Looking similar doesn't prove much.

Neanderthals were human--just a different subspecies of humans. We're the only subspecies left, now; there used to be more. It's not surprising. And their behavior seems to have been quite similar to ours, too. They had a sensory system much like ours. They probably had a complex language. They cooked their food, made tools that show evidence of a high skill in stone-working, hunted cooperatively, buried their dead, made and wore clothing, and may even have created musical instruments.

They are not at all far away from us, either genetically or socially, with less than 1% genetic distance between us. If you were to clone a Neanderthal (we can't, but it's interesting to think about), dress him in modern human clothing, and teach him English, he wouldn't stick out very much at all.

How does Neanderthal theory account for other sub species interbreeding? What if Neanderthals aren't the only ones breeding with Homo Sapiens? No one ever mentions a connection between other sub species interbreeding and genetic conditions we experience now.

Part of it seems to be that we were lucky enough to get Neanderthal DNA to study. DNA is pretty fragile--it's really fortunate to find any as old as thirty thousand years or more.

Callista...I wasn't surprised to look like a Neanderthal because I didn't think they'd look human or weren't incredibly similar/close to humans, but because I personally look very much like that recreation...wavy, red, nappyish hair, blue eyes (atypical for red hair), super pale skin, same lip shape and color, etc. Like, if I were a Neanderthal child, I'd look just like that.

Oh, I get it now It's a beautifully done recreation, too. She almost seems real.

Your analogy is flawed. Genes are packed together on chromosomes, and they usually stay together.
In a (reasonably) proper analogy, you need a number of card decks (23, but one of those is special), and each person gets two cards dealt from each those decks.
And only a few of those 23 decks contain the genesets responsible for autism, so it is very plausible that these come from Neanderthal interbreeding.

Have you actually read the paper?

I realize you are a supporter of the theory, but could it be possible, even if it is just a small change that there isn't any red hair in my family?

I stumbled upon a website that CLAIMED ( it seemed like a less than reputable site) that that very thing HAD been tested. Supposidly children with face blindness were shown pictures of "neanderthal faces" ( I assume that they meant artist's reconstructions -they didnt explain) and found they were better at regonizing the faces,and also found the Neanderthal faces to be "more asthetically pleasing" than normal faces.

That would be a startling find if that were true. But I choose not to believe it until I see it in a reputable journal.

I find neanderthal men extremely unattractive personality. Red hair, fair skin, facial hair and broad built is about the least attractive man I could imagine. Sorry if anyone has these traits, I may still like you as a person, I probably just wouldn't have a crush on you or anything.