Proposed evolutionary origins of Autism

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Read the following article! It is a bit spooky!

http://www.rdos.net/eng/asperger.htm

oh so we were perfectly normal thousands of years ago!

hehe

I cant be bothered to read it all, can you summarize it?

*crashes upon the shore and falls face first into the sand*

I finished reading it.

Woot.

Yeah.. anyone can write stuff on the net and call it an article!

" Closer study of them revealed that anthropology wanted to make sure to exclude them from our gene-pool. However, the reason for this is obscure. The reasoning is only based on phylogenic analysis of mitochondria-DNA."

This clumsy sentance summarizes the whole problem. Analysis of mitochondiral DNA shows us that Neanderthals are not closely related to us. Dammit.

I dislike the idea that autism came from neanderthals. I dislike it as it makes us seem inferior to NTs when we clearly are not. I believe Aspergers to be evolution and that we will inherit the earth. Other people with autistic spectrum disorders will as well. Possibly in 2012 when the revolution occurs.

Ugh. Pseudo-scholarship at it's very best. I actually wasted time looking at the "reference links". Guh. Only my overdeveloped tenacity got me as far as

"Cleanliness" (my "favorite" section). After that I'm going back to "what does Sally think that Anne thinks?"...

"Many people with AS has problems in maintaining the desired level of hygiene. Neanderthals most likely didn't wash themselves frequently, since it would waste a lot of heat to wash yourself in cold water. The risk for infections that motivate tropical populations to cleanliness, would also largely be non-present in ice-age Europe. Neanderthals for this reason most likely evolved some other adaptation to protect against infections and parasites. Cystic Fibrosis (CF) gives us a clue. The diagnostic criteria of CF is high concentration of salt in sweat. Possibly this and other not yet discovered mechanisms are the motivation for AS people's aversion for washing their skin too often. Dry skin and chaps is the result of washing themselves too much."

Oops, I must be mis-diagnosed -- my HFA son with CF as well. Gosh, you just smell the aspies coming GODS! Was there any deviant or unattractive trait the "author", err "collector", missed?

Oh well. The author of the article must be an idiot. They are a bit of a nazi.

First - Aspies are not inferior because of neanderthal inheritance because neanderthals were not inferior. It is not necesarily true that the smartest "species" survives as they mix in a novel habitat. It could just as well be the species that reproduces most, doesn't care about ecology (lots of extinctions in the back-waters of Hs "colonization).

As for mtDNA, it is one haplotype, and doesn't say much if anything about the rest of the genome. The mtDNA might be under selective pressure too.

i think you are reading too much into it. If neanderthals bred with us, then we'd be so interbred right now that nobody is anywhere near a pure neander. This article describes tendancies. It explains various tendancies for almost the entire population, and makes some correlations of neander's evolutionary logic to autism. This article doesnt prove anything. It is merely exploring ideas.

I prefer to believe that aspie-like tendencies were the "norm" multiple-thousands of years ago among certain very early human peoples, such as the Aborigines of Australia, the pre-Celtic people of Britain, certain anomalous Native American tribes... people who seem to have melted away into oblivion - or intermarried away into oblivion, thereby contributing their unquenchable uniqueness to the gene pool.

It just seems like I have more in common with what we do know about certain peoples of the past than I do with most people today...

Last edited by NoMore on 07 Jul 2005, 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'll agree with you, but mostly out of ignorence. I don't know what it was like to live with neanderthals, but it sounds interesting none the less.

Neandertals have gotten a bad wrap, too. They weren't stupid. They weren't particularly ugly. They are only presented in such a way because the first skeleton found was of a really old man Neandertal who was decrepit and had had various illnesses and thus was, erm, a lot uglier needless to say.

Between Neandertals and Homo sapiens, there are more similarities than differences. But the differences are extreme enough to note them as a different species, generally speaking.

Nevertheless, as was said earlier, DNA testing is leaning towards humans and Neandertals having not interbred. Autism is a human condition and probably of more recent development. I suspect many autistic individuals (especially the lower-functioning ones) would have died out because of having to try to survive, if indeed Autism developed so early in our history. I mean, yes, humans tried to take care of the young, old, and infirmed. But I can't imagine they would be very successful with the severely autistic.

My bet is Autism Spectrum Disorders arose within the last couple thousand years. And then just spread through the populations. But that's only me guessing of course.

Cindy, I agree with you that our traits were much more common in early Europe. In a way, you could say Aspies stems from early populations as well, but this still doesn't explain the origin, IMHO.

Some believe that Aspies are a future species, but evolution doesn't work with a result in mind, so this idea is impossible from a scientific perspective.

Nomaken, you would generally be correct, if it wasn't for selective breading. There is considerable selective breeding going on between Aspies today, and probably this has always happened. This is because the social preferences are very important when people find their partner. These are also the very one's that create new species without isolation. Selective breeding will keep the social preferences and linked traits together for extended periods of time, and certainly for the mere 1,500 generations since Hn disappeared.

Besides, the proofs are emerging from the Aspie-quiz, and the new evaluation I'm working on. I've activiated the quiz again and
now I store "referrer site",which means I know were everybody that answers the quiz got the link (but not who they are). Some
sites have very narrow topics, so the results from those can be used to correlate topics with Aspieness. Some sites are "NT", and will provide a more suitable reference group.

Sophist, you are certainly right that neanderthals had got a bad name, and this is not backed up in reality. For instance, there are evidences that they made glue, cared for their dead, manifactured flutes and so on. The African origin of the whole humanity
also does not explain why Eurasians generally have higher IQs, slower maturation and so on. This is much better explained
by Hn inheritance.

No, Sophist, modern DNA is not leaning towards no interbreeding. On the contrary, every haplotype in Eurasia that is older than 100ky or so is proof against this idea. The list of such haplotypes is growing longer and longer. Many people are heading away
from the replacement ideas.

As for low-functioning autistics, I don't think they survived, but that is irrelevant. The high-functioning one's would keep the
genes in the pool, and occassionally create low-functioning dead-ends.

Uh, what quiz? What site? I'll be sure to come in from some inappropriately NT site