Neanderthal theory of Autism and occipital bun

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That's the most stupid suggestion I've ever heard.

The Neanderthals naturally had the bulge because they had some over-developped brain function in that area, which is the visual processing area. It tells us that Neanderthals had a more advanced visual processing system than us.

He suggests that bone relics at a number of European sites where human bones were neatly-dissected and lying among the bones of other animals provides evidence of their consumption of humans...I think both species had to hunt and eat whatever they could get during the last ice age. But I also think that different groups of of each species have interacted on completely different terms with one another. I mean, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted for 5 - 7000 years. A lot can happen during such a time span. And there is evidence for technology exchange between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, so at least some groups must have gotten along on peaceful terms.

Neandertals were hominids that occupied most of Europe immediately before H. sapiens moved into their territory and most likely caused their extinction over a very short period of time. Neandertals had brain sizes as large as or often exceeding those of H. sapiens yet it has been a puzzle why they appeared to be far less cognitively advanced. However, after extensive analysis of 163 fossil individuals from the Pleistocene, Ruff et al. (1997) have concluded that relative to body mass, Neandertals were slightly less encephalized than modern humans. Their large brain mass is attributed to their larger than average body mass for Pleistocene Homo. This is the same picture that we saw with the emergence of the first H. erectus. Its brain size was almost double that of the australopithecines, but so was its body size.

That hasn't been proved. There are many indications to the contrary.

How could there be many indications to the contrary? The problem is actually that autism hasn't been studied in Africa enough except I think in Egypt and Tunisia, both obviously being in north Africa. But if you watch the kids in this video it seems pretty obvious a lot of them would be on the spectrum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgyQEyj60bg



Autism cannot exist in Bonobo, since Autism basically is an inability to understand neurotypical humans.

Well- tell that to the scientist on the PBS show who devoted his life to studying the Neanderthals. Im just repeating what he said.

But also you're confusing the container with the contents.

The back of the brain is indeed where the visual cortex is, but a bigger visual cortex than yours or mine wouldnt necessary cause Neanderthal skulls to bulge in the rear. Brain is soft tissue- you can stuff it into any container the right overall size regardless of which lobes get more growth.

Scientiest look inside the fossil skull for impressions from the brain itsself for clues to how the skull owner brain was set up. They dont look at the external shape of the skull.


The brain doesnt dictate the shape of its hard bone container. Other things- like muscle attachments- and the wight of the Jaw come into play.

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: We delude ourselves into believing that the variations that we can measure, those bumps, those grooves, those little nodules coming out of a skull, that those actually give us information that answer the questions we're asking in the first place. And, and they may not.

I'll give you an example. This is a Neanderthal. It's a classic Neanderthal about 60,000 years old, from France. It's got a big, huge projecting face and a big brow ridge. And it's got a projecting back of its skull. It's called an occipital bun. It's like somebody took their fist and punched out the inside of its brain case. And here's an early modern human from Europe, about 30,000 years old.

And he's obviously not the same as a Neanderthal, his face is a lot smaller, and it's underneath the brain case a lot more. But it still has pretty big brow ridges, and it's also got somewhat of an occipital bun. So the question is, are the large browridges and the occipital bun on this fellow inherited from, from the Neanderthal? Are these things the same or do they just look the same?

NARRATOR: Lieberman and colleagues Dennis Bramble and Brian Richmond, want to find out what purpose an occipital bun might have served in the first place.

They suspect it might have something to do with the bio-mechanics of running.

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: When you and I go running, every time our foot hits the ground our head has a tendency to jolt forward. And we have to hold our heads steady, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see very well when we ran.

NARRATOR: They've wired Brian so they can see how his neck muscles work to keep his head steady.

But what if the runner was a Neanderthal?

DANIEL LIEBERMAN : OK, Brian, time to give you some brow ridges.

NARRATOR: To find out, they've rigged a mask with weights to simulate the heavy Neanderthal face.

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: You look marvelous. OK, good to go.

NARRATOR: It looks like the Neanderthal would have faced special problems as a runner.

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: It's pretty interesting. What we saw is that when you run with a human face, without the face mask, there are a lot of vertical accelerations once you break into a run, but the face doesn't accelerate much in the horizontal plane. But as soon as you put that mask on you move the center of gravity forward and have to make those neck muscles work harder. All of a sudden you get huge horizontal accelerations.

NARRATOR: Unchecked, this kind of motion would impair the runner's vision and balance.

Lieberman suspects that the Neanderthal's occipital bun evolved to solve the problem, by counterbalancing the large, heavy face.

But if that's the case, why would the modern human have a bun?

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: It turns out that there are lots of human populations that have occipital buns. Some of these early modern Europeans have them and there are some recent people in Europe who have them. If you're a Lapp or a Finn, you're more likely to have the occipital bun. But bushmen from South Africa often have occipital buns. And Australian aborigines often have occipital buns.

But in all cases, these are populations that have very narrow skulls and very big brains. And that's because the brain has to grow on the skull base. And if the skull base is narrow the brain can only go up, to the side to some extent, but also backwards. And it works perfectly. People with narrow heads and big brains are much more likely to have occipital buns.

NARRATOR: If Lieberman is right, the occipital buns in Neanderthals evolved for different reasons than those in moderns, which means they would provide no evidence, one way or the other, about ancestry.

In this kind of detective work, eliminating false leads is half the battle.

DANIEL LIEBERMAN: This experiment is not going to be a smoking gun. Any experiment is not going to be a smoking gun. Any bit of morphology is not going to be a smoking gun. And that's because skulls are really complex. And there's no way we're going to get any simple answers from such a dynamic, complex system. But the more we understand about how skulls grow, the more we understand about how skulls function, the better we will be at teasing apart the complex information that we get.

Basically? I don't like that word in that place. Autism is a lot more than 'basically an inability to understand neurotypical humans'. Would that mean auties and aspies who decided to go away and live in some sort of commune and not have anything to do with NT's would suddenly be cured of autism?
I am personally sceptical about Teco having autism but he could have something comparable even if only by definition he cannot have a 'human condition'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhOhB9klfa8

While there is increasing awareness of autism in the industrialized world, there is hardly any in developing countries. Autistic children in Uganda face a dearth of educational opportunities, and near-total ignorance by society about both their disadvantages and their capacities. Parents and family members have nowhere to turn for information and support as they struggle to meet the needs of their children. They often end up isolating themselves and suffer in silence.

In June 2006, Noerine Kaleeba’s daughter, Elizabeth, whose son is autistic, established the Komo Centre For Understanding Autism in Entebbe. The school is currently run on a "mainstreaming model," with 8 autistic children and 21 non autistic pre-school children whose presence stimulates integration and avoids isolation of autistic kids.

Cyanobacteria are just as well-adapted and evolutionary fit as humans, even though they haven't changed for billions of years.

Anthropocentrism to talk of more evolved!

In physical anthropology class years back, my professor was discussing the skull structure of Neanderthals, and specifically the occipital bun. She went on to discuss this being a marker of the species, and that it was exclusive to Neanderthals, I immediately raised my hand, and questioned, how her information was gathered on that particular subject, for I happened to have brought strong physical evidence with me that day to class to the contrary of what she was saying...my own skull, occipital bun included.

We discussed at fairly great length my hypothesis that Neanderthal had indeed been interbreed with modern man, and that we carried in us a trace of that lineage, even if it might be small. I maintained the position the there was an admixture, the obviousness lay right in front of our eyes if we only took a moment to see it.

I would also expect that beyond just the occipital bun, and other genes responsible for skull shape, that there was likely other inclusions that would have been very fortuitous to take from Neanderthal, on a purely physical level. These inclusion would be those that had helped Neanderthal adapt to the northern climate, including dietary/nutritional systems, pigmentation and hair types, and immune systems. Just for starters these inclusions would carry obvious benefits...and if one let their imagination loose on the idea of the admixture, the realm of the mind and brain comes to play.

She maintained, however, that no such admixture had taken place (nor could have taken place). As there is no trace of their mitochondrial dna in present man, making it impossible to have interbreed. I tried to explain the flaw in that logic to her, that mitochondrial dna is mother to child, and an admixture from Neanderthal male to human female would have produced a half-breed with human mitochondrial dna....but she maintained it wouldn't have been possible.

It irks me when mostly rational people fail to understand things that seem so obvious to me. But, I digress...

I have an occipital bun, it is rather pronounced, hats don't fit me properly, my head has a somewhat narrow, elongated appearance. I've been self conscious about it before, but it really doesn't seem to be viewed as unattractive or terribly disfiguring or anything, so I mostly just ignore it anymore....and don't wear hats.

Wow, your teacher is kind of dumb. If she's a physical anthropology professor, she should be aware that our Neanderthal ancestry is still present and visible in the small sampling of human genomes we've fully sequenced.

Wow, your teacher is kind of dumb. If she's a physical anthropology professor, she should be aware that our Neanderthal ancestry is still present and visible in the small sampling of human genomes we've fully sequenced.

Teco hasn't been suggested to have autism, just autistic like traits. Autistic like traits have also been evidenced in mouse models, with some of the same dna markers associated with human beings and autism.

http://news.discovery.com/animals/young-bonobo-autism-110922.html

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/brain-and-behavior/articles/2011/03/21/scientists-create-autism-like-traits-in-mice

Autism has definitely been diagnosed in indigenous African countries. There is a Center for Autistic Individuals in Uganda, established by a parent there of an autistic child.

http://www.komolearningcentres.org/Komo_Autism_Centre.php