Our Ancient Origins?

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https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 091541.htm
Brain scans tend to support a hypothesis that Aspie brains are more influenced by the genes that humans picked up from Neanderthals. They had larger brains and muscles than we do, and developed similar stone tools, but they never developed trade. They were smart enough to figure out things with little help from others, but not smart enough socially to form alliances.

Doesn't rdos (creator of the aspie quiz) support this idea?

Interesting.

The notion that autism might be a legacy of surviving Neanderthal genes was in vogue a couple years ago. And was talked about a lot on WP then. Then the notion faded away both here on WP, and in the world at large after a while. This seems to support it. and might revive the debate.

Was a student of anthropology back in the Seventies (long before I was dxd with aspergers)..

Even did a term paper in college that concluded that Neanderthals did not evolve in to modern Europeans, but were driven to extinction by anatomical modern people coming out of Asia before that became the consensus.

So I was an interested skeptic in the notion when I began hearing about it a couple of years ago.

One-on-one Neanderthals were as smart as anatomical moderns, but they didn't pool their resources, or their intelligence as well moderns do. They didn't have long distance trade the way that even primitive hunter gathers of today have, or did in the stone age. So it struck me as being superficially plausible that us modern day ASD folks might be that way because we inherited some Neanderthal behavior via genes. But I was still skeptical.

Its a fascinating complex thing to unweave. If this Neanderthal notion were true then autism would be more prevalent in non African populations than in African populations. There isn't any clear evidence one way or the other about that.

He is working a few papers on this theory

I had missed the earlier discussions. I remember that my earliest general impression, which I grew up on, is that I was not evolved for life in a large social group. We had a population explosion when we discovered agriculture, and are having to cope with severe overcrowding as a result, not wanting to go back to jungle life with just a few descendants.

Right. I really like the Aspie Quiz, but I would need convincing in order to actually believe this theory.

I am looking forward into more research on the topic.

I am as well. I would like to know if there were any more similarities between Aspies and Neanderthals.

I don't believe that Neanderthal Man passed on an "autism" gene.

It would not have been possible for a whole group of autistic people to have survived in the Ice Age. Cooperation, and being able to read cues, was an absolute requirement then.

And the sensory overload in that cave or shelter---that would have been overwhelming!

Yes, there could have been, like today, a few autistic people amid many "NTs."

I have nothing against Neanderthal Man, mind you. I wanted him to be of our species, in fact.

I cannot conceive of a situation where Neanderthal Man passed on an "autism" gene.

I have heard they linked to schizophrenia.

During an Ice Age, the tropics become temperate, and vast new coastal plains appear as the oceans recede. Overall, there is far more life on Earth, but Europe gets it bad because the Gulf Stream shuts down.

Now, who says that Neanderthals spent most of their lives in caves? They may have spent most of their life as free-ranging as Orangutans, and only ever dealt with a half-dozen other family members for small parts of their lives.

Along with all the other genetics of their line, they were more viable than most hominids, so I don't see them as seeming odd to each other, such as we do to NTs. However, when the genes are mixed, the combination can have novel expressions as they are incorporated with the main chorus. I think that Ma Nature found us useful as inventors and such, but does not need many, nor would she want to support more challenges to group dynamics.

There is some data that supports his theory. It has to do with the occurance of autism in Africa, versus the other continents. The problem is that genes have been spread everyehere due to european colonoialism.

It's possible that some "European" genetic features were present in the Neanderthal (and the "anatomically modern" humans of that time).

It's possible that a slight propensity for autism is one of the features.

But I would tend to doubt that autism was "passed down" as a prominent genetic feature from the Neanderthals to Homo sapiens sapiens.

Traits or genes can be passed for many reasons, the least of which is that it does not cause death before the individual can reproduce. it could be linked to some other advantageous trait or it can be advantageous in and of itself.

A trait can be a disadvantage to the individual almost every time it is expressed, and still be conserved by the relative success of the group with the gene. Inventors are seldom the ones to get rich from their work, and most don't succeed at all, but they are still a controlling influence on history.

There still has to be some mechanism for it to be copied. Recessive genes, or ones that are not inherently fatal until after reproduction.