Our Neanderthal cousins "apparently did not get autism.

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No, they didn't. You are misinformed. Read the full paper. It says nothing about autism not being present in Neanderthal at all. That's an interpretation in the media review, which is not supported in the paper.

Neanderthals were not our cousins - and of course they did not get autism - why? - because they had no corpus collosum joining the right and left hemispheres of their brain - and that's where all of our non-chemically-induced mental aberrations happen - even gender confusion -they draw sabre-toothed tigers on cave walls and count how many feet they had at one and the same time - they didn't think like us - they didn't even think the same things like us - but they might be cousins of neurotypicals

No they said literally: "Interestingly, the team also found that some of the highly methylated regional areas that appear in modern humans do not appear in either Neanderthals or Denisovans, regions that have been associated with neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and autism—a finding that may help shed some light on their source."

We don't know the differences in this regions between autism and neurotypicals is, only that they differ. If it is associated with autism, it can mean - not necessary - that that in autistic people also do not appear in comparison to neurotypicals. Am I right? it's hard to find the truth sometimes

btw, it is already hypothesized that autistic people have more mesomorphic body types. And if this region is associated with HOXD gen, it may be one of the possible places which code for mesomorph or neanderthal body types.

Yes I think you're right in some part. Many autistic people have new mutations, which basically can say that we autistic people are becoming a little like neanderthals, but that we differ from them in much more ways. So, we have changes to neurotypicals, just like neanderthals had changes from homo sapiens. Neanderthals only contributed partly to our genome, other differences are new (perhaps similiar geentic changes as neanderthals had in comparison to homo sapiens).

The most current archeological findings are pointing towards Neanderthals being more advanced and closer to us then previously thought. Indeed it is still believed that they and we had a common ancestor about 1 1/2 million years ago.

I do not find it hard to believe either scenario, that they also had autism or that they did not. Autism is (in prevalent theory) a difference in brain development, often very subtle. And 1 1/2 million years is a long time for subtle and even moderate differences to have developed between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens.

Our closest living relative, the Chimpanzee also shares about 98% DNA, but is very different and many conditions and diseases do not cross over. The devil is in the details and the details are very spectulative about the other hominin at this point. But science is at a point where I think many new things will be learned and other ideas disproved in a relatively short period ahead. It is a very interesting time in this field at the moment.