Are autistics part Neanderthal?

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Fnord
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28 Jan 2012, 4:55 pm

monstermunch wrote:

I dont know where this kind of BS pops up from.

Look for threads with titles like "Aspies - Are we the next step in evolution?"

rdos
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28 Jan 2012, 5:03 pm

Fnord wrote:

Explain Down Syndrome, then.

It's also called "Trisomy 21", where all or part of an extra 21st chromosome is present. Down syndrome is associated with some impairment of cognitive ability - the average IQ of children with Down syndrome is around 50, compared to normal children with an IQ of 100.

Down syndrome has little to nothing to do with ASC, so I don't see the relevance. Down syndrome, as you wrote, is a trisomy, a genetic error. ASC does not have anything to do with genetic errors, but are differences.

Fnord wrote:

Ergo, genetics determines intelligence, or is at least a significant determinative factor.

Err, no. My suspicion is that intelligence, as defined by g-factor, does not measure "intelligence" (whatever that is), but hybrid vigor. The researchers that research IQ and g-factor claim that the g factor is the primary factor in human diversity (at least when education-type tests are used). However, this is not really true. The primary factors in human diversity when using broad questionaries (like Aspie Quiz), is two factors relating to Neanderthal and modern human traits that explains roughly 70% of human diversity. After this, there is a minor factor that explains about 1% of the variation, that appears to be related to IQ tests.

Now think about this. Researchers of IQ and g-factor claim that g-factor is primary in human variation. A broader view, taking neurodiversity into account, can only attribute 1% to g-factor. What this means is that most of the g-factor actually measures neurodiversity-traits. Depending on if a culture think that neurodiversity traits are good or not, different IQ tests can be constructed, that actually appear to have a high genetic loading specifically on intelligence, when they really measure clusters of neurodiversity -traits and rates them depending on cultural values.

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28 Jan 2012, 5:04 pm

I am no Nead...(whatever), and the only people I am related to are my family, those are the only people I come from. I was diagnosed with Mild Aspergers Syndrome, which was a Disorder discovered by Hans Aspergers in 1994. Otherwise, I am a healthy human, I am not some sort of other species.

I HATE Autism.

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Fnord
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28 Jan 2012, 5:06 pm

Joe90 wrote:

Hear! Hear!

Joe90 wrote:

I HATE Autism.

I don't think anyone else is particularly fond of it, either.

Fnord
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28 Jan 2012, 5:09 pm

rdos wrote:

My suspicion...

Suspicions prove nothing.

The rest may be worth looking into. Can you provide some relevant links?

rdos
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28 Jan 2012, 5:11 pm

Fnord wrote:

monstermunch wrote:

I dont know where this kind of BS pops up from.

Look for threads with titles like "Aspies - Are we the next step in evolution?"

Not so. The Neanderthal theory dates back 11 years to 2001, before WP, and before "Aspies are the next step in human evolution".

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28 Jan 2012, 5:15 pm

Joe90 wrote:

How come none other conditions have all of these extra things related? Why just Autism? And what about people who are borderline Aspies, or have PDD-NOS, or have traits of AS but can be clasified as neurotypical? Are they all ''Neanderthal'' too? Are they ''half-Neanderthal''? What about people who have ADHD but have a few AS traits with it? What about people like myself who just have mild AS? And if we ain't humans then how come we don't have any notable physical differences like those with Down's Syndrome and even Fragile-X do?

Joe90 wrote:

We are all humans. It is just that Eurasian humans have about 3-5% Neanderthal DNA. That goes for all Eurasian humans and their ancestors, not just for autists. If anything, this makes people of Eurasian descent (including aspies) somewhat different from African populations, but not enough to constitute speciation or even subspeciation.

Btw, Neanderthals were humans too. A different human species, but still a human species. Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis share a common ancestor, Homo erectus (who was also human). Human means "a member of the genus Homo" not "...of the species Homo sapiens". Neanderthals were just as advanced as our sapiens ancestors at the time.

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28 Jan 2012, 5:17 pm

monstermunch wrote:

And if autistics were a different species then unborn babies would be able to be tested for autism while still in the womb, being that theres a different kind of 'living thing' inside the womb.

See above. Nobody said that autistic people were a different species. We might have 5% Neanderthal DNA whereas the average Eurasian has only 4%, or we have inherited different Neanderthal markers than neurotypical people. But all Eurasians have a little Neanderthal in them.

We are not a different species, and neither have Eurasians speciated from Africans just because we've inherited a tiny amount of DNA from another human species that was closely related to us in the first place. We all belong to the same human race.

Last edited by CrazyCatLord on 28 Jan 2012, 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

rdos
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28 Jan 2012, 5:18 pm

monstermunch wrote:

I agree with joe90 on this one. Autism isn't 'all or nothing.' It is a spectrum, a range of developmental disorders, and there is high possibiliy of a person on the spectrum to suffer other co morbids. Some people can have traits of it but not meet the autistic criteria to the full extent and so what will that make them?

That's exactly what we expect from ancient hybrization. It is not claimed that "Aspies are Neanderthals" and "NTs are Africans", but that ASC and neurodiversity traits are inherited from Neanderthals.

monstermunch wrote:

And if autistics were a different species then unborn babies would be able to be tested for autism while still in the womb, being that theres a different kind of 'living thing' inside the womb.

Apparently, it was possible to mix when Hs met Hn, so why would it not be possible now? The evidence is in the mixed ancestry of non-Africans. It is quite possible for Hs and Hn material to coexist.

monstermunch wrote:

Its freaky when it comes down to it because it looks like its always 'autistics vs humans'. Its bad enough autistics feeling different without being convinced theyre not humans either. I dont know where this kind of BS pops up from.

Neanderthals were human, but not exactly like us. This is the new view that is emerging in paleoanthropology.

CrazyCatLord
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28 Jan 2012, 5:34 pm

Fnord wrote:

monstermunch wrote:

I dont know where this kind of BS pops up from.

Look for threads with titles like "Aspies - Are we the next step in evolution?"

This doesn't have anything to do with illusions of genetic superiority. Homo sapiens is simply a very diverse species that has screwed a lot of other human species in the past

Neanderthal markers are not the only non-H. sapiens genes in our DNA (I have to go through my links to find the article, but there is evidence that our ancestors had fun with a variety of other H.erectus descendants).

Btw, if you want proof that this is not just idle speculation: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43866502/ns ... -says-dna/
On the link between Neanderthal DNA and autism, ADHD, Huntington's, MS and other conditions: http://rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

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28 Jan 2012, 6:16 pm

If this is only attributed to genetics (no other factors), then I wonder about about twins.
Are there any cases of identical twins, one on the spectrum, and the other being neurotypical?

:?:

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28 Jan 2012, 6:49 pm

I found the articles that I mentioned. Other than Neanderthal DNA, modern humans also have genetic admixture of Denisovans and Skuhl / Qafzeh hominids, and probably other archaic (i.e. extinct and not anatomically modern) H. erectus descendants that lived alongside modern humans in Africa.

According to this article, Denisovans interbred with H. sapiens in South and Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Borneo, Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Polynesia:
http://www.livescience.com/16171-deniso ... -asia.html

And here is another article on genetic admixture in African populations:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14947363

Peter Frost (a French anthropologist) lists the percentage admixture to the human genome as follows:
http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2011/01 ... other.html

Eurasians: 1-4% Neanderthal (I've read 3-5% elsewhere)
Melanesians: 8% Denisovan and Neanderthal
Sub-Saharan Africans: 13% Skuhl / Qafzeh (which were anatomically closer to modern humans than Neanderthals)

(The "hobbit" mentioned in the article is Homo floresiensis btw. The author uses the nickname instead of the scientific name).

To sum up, H. erectus, the most successful hominid of his time, migrated from Africa to Eurasia and evolved into several, regionally different descendant species. One of these species was H. sapiens, who evolved in Africa. H. sapiens also migrated to the Eurasian continent and slept around with H. neanderthalensis. Meanwhile, the remaining African H. sapiens populations had carnal fun with various other African descendants of H. erectus (among them Skuhl / Qafzeh). Later on, some Eurasian H. sapiens, tired of screwing Neanderthals, ran into Denisova hominids in East Asia and Oceania, and made merry with them as well.

Conclusion: All modern day humans are mongrels But none of us is non-human or more evolved or more primitive or whatever. We carry in us the genes of many different human species and none of us is a "pure" Homo sapiens, but we all share the vast majority of our genome and we all belong to the same human race.

CrazyCatLord
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28 Jan 2012, 6:56 pm

goodwitchy wrote:

If this is only attributed to genetics (no other factors), then I wonder about about twins.
Are there any cases of identical twins, one on the spectrum, and the other being neurotypical?

:?:

I googled for "twin study autism" and this came up: http://blog.autismspeaks.org/2011/07/04 ... k-factors/

Quote:

It found that when one identical twin develops autism, the chance of the other twin developing the disorder is 70 percent. More surprisingly, it documented a whopping 35 percent overlap among fraternal twins. This is strong evidence that environmental influences are at play.
...

In other words, we now have strong evidence that, on top of genetic heritability, a shared prenatal environment may have a greater than previously realized role in the development of autism in twins

So it seems to be the same as with conditions like schizophrenia, which have both a genetic component and environmental triggers. Something happens in the womb or shortly after birth that triggers the genetic predisposition for autism.

EXPECIALLY
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28 Jan 2012, 7:13 pm

People on the spectrum don't like this theory, but Neanderthals were in fact absorbed by the Homo Sapien population.

If you don't believe me, Google Neanderthal Admixture Theory, it isn't even a hypothesis anymore.

In the past, scientists have only said the last of the Neanderthals were "assumed" to have been absorbed by Homo Sapien and that the last colonies were most heavily concentrated in what's now the Iberian Peninsula.

So, even if Autistics aren't a product of resurfacing Neanderthal DNA, SOMEONE is(Admixture Theory).

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28 Jan 2012, 7:20 pm

wogaboo wrote:

Somebody created this theory that autistics are part Neanderthal and this theory makes a lot of sense. What's especially impressive is that this theory was conceived before scientists concluded that non-Africans have Neanderthal DNA so the theory had predictive validity.

I believe that Neanderthals had bigger brains and were smarter than humans however humans had the capacity to communicate and thus COMBINE their intelligence. So while Neanderthal could outsmart humans one on one, humans had more COLLECTIVE intelligence and thus could outsmart Neanderthals group against group.

As a result of their inferior social and linguistic communication skills, Neanderthals were slaughtered by humans but a few Neanderthal genes survived in the human population. Now humans had both their original communication skills, but also the Neanderthal genes enhanced their brain size. So with both human communication skill and overall High IQ inherited from Neanderthals, modern humans were unstoppable and the great leap forward occurred giving rise to art and symbolic thought.

Now a few humans had extra Neanderthal DNA and they were smart enough to be engineers and math/tech types. However in the kids of math/tech types, you sometimes get too much Neanderthal genes and you'd get a brain that wanted to grow as big as a neanderthal's but it couldn't fit into the smaller human skull, so after accelerated brain growth in childhood expanding the skull, the brain begins to shrink. All this does damage to the brain, a condition we call autism today.

I suggest one way to diagnose autism in adults is to check if the brain is too small for the skull.

Your stunning lack of basic understanding of history, evolution and autism is boggling.

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28 Jan 2012, 7:26 pm

Fnord wrote:

It's also called "Trisomy 21", where all or part of an extra 21st chromosome is present. Down syndrome is associated with some impairment of cognitive ability - the average IQ of children with Down syndrome is around 50

Most are around 70 - mildly ret*d, almost none are below 20.

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