The Neanderthal theory of Autism

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That's interesting, but, take into account ethnic groups who migrated to Europe, let's say, a thousand years ago from places where brown eyes, thick, dark, brown hair and medium skin tones are common. How do you explain the descendants of these people having blue eyes, a lighter complection, and hair fairer and thinner than their ancestors? One theory is moving further north means less sunlight which causes lighter pigmentation. It's been stated that if everyone moves to places near the equator, over generations, people would exhibit darker skin, hair and eyes, even if their ancestors all had lighter hair color, pale skin and blue eyes. That doesn't sound like one gene that mutated in one person and spreads throughout the offspring.
What about animals comouflaging, concealing themselves from predators? This could be more widespread than the "one mutated gene" theory. It could be an entire population spontaneously mutating at once in response to their environment.

Better links (the research studies themselves, which are both free):

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/710
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/328/5979/723

thanks a million! anybody care to interpret this sentence, I'm having confusion about what they mean by the word 'deeper' here:

"A challenge in detecting signals of gene flow between Neandertals and modern human ancestors is that the two groups share common ancestors within the last 500,000 years, which is no deeper than the nuclear DNA sequence variation within present-day humans."

If you replace "deeper" with "further back in time" you should end up with a pretty close approximation.

I've now written an analysis of the issue in my blog: http://blog.rdos.net/?p=63

The new research doesn't support the Neanderthal theory of autism. You could say it makes it more implausible not less. It shows how genetics actually works not a fairytale syphon, in order to fit a theory.

Objectivity goes down the pan as soon as someone becomes emotionally attached to hypothesis, that is sort to the problem with dissertation culture, everyone wants a good one, and therefore "prove" something.

Something else that's interesting: Polar Bears. They are near the top of the food chain and live in the Artic Circle or thereabouts. Does anybody ever wonder why they are white? They might have started out as Brown Bears and changed when they started living in harsher climates further north. Obviously, their white fur allows them to blend into the snow and ice they are surrounded by. Perhaps it makes it easier for them to find food. Chances are their ancestors were able to reproduce as Brown Bears with the offspring becoming lighter over what might have taken thousands of years. It might not have been due to natural selection as much as it was due to general mutations triggered by factors in their changing environment.

Not true. Already several years ago I showed that their distribution of Neanderthal interbreeding was exactly how the Aspie traits are distributed. The more logical would be that they are higher in Europeans (or similar world around), but this is not the case. Instead, it is Native American Indians that has the world's highest prevalence and Africans the lowest.

So, it is not only that interbreeding occured, but also *how* it occured.

BTW, I also presented (new) data in the blog-entry that anybody could check in larger studies. And a single Aspie genome could disprove the theory, if somebody dares to try it.

I'm a little curious about what you mean about that. I'm not even sure how anything has been "fit" to the theory. I can acknowledge that I don't know why and how the Aspie-traits still are linked after so many generations, but that they are is indisputable. Their links are also proportional to their relevance for the Aspie-NT dimension, and the traits with the highest links are social and communication traits. That is the facts.

So how do we explain this? I've made genetic simulations, but have not been able to reproduce this linkage in 1,500 generations. But then we do not know how mating behaviors are coded, and most importantly, how they are protected from obstruction over long time-spans. Mating rituals in mammals are very complex, so it is not likely they are single mutations. I don't find it likely that they are genes either.

So, nobody can explain the linkage patterns for Aspie-traits, but this does not mean that the Neanderthal theory is not valid. We probably need some new (testable) hypotheses in this area before we can proceed.

Bold idea topic

Would you explain this, please?

Explain the result or how I arrived at it?

The reason why American Indians are highest is because they have been isolated for a very long time without any gene-flow from African/South Asian populations.

The result stems from Aspie-quiz. American Indians both have higher interest-rate than expected and higher Aspie rates than other populations. African Americans have 1/6 of the expected participation rate, but the same Aspie rate for those that participate.

it's weird that the south asian population has a low showing, that's supposedly where the indo europeans took root and took over, it's so tempting to think about this stuff and start making connections that might not have any merit, but it sure would explain alot

What does this mean? And where can we see the statistics, or better still the raw data?

Statistics: www.rdos.net/eng/aspeval

As for the raw data, I don't give that out without some good reason.