Are autistics part Neanderthal?

Post Reply New Topic

I usually only answer when I disagree about something.



I don't know. It probably temporarily results in a more hostile environment, but in the long run it will be beneficial.

I think much of it is a result of all the chemicals and pollution. There's so many environmental factors that could be at play in causing the more severe cases and the rising statistics.

1. Neanderthals were human
2. What you call humans is actually homo sapiens sapiens, or modern humans.
3. We couldn't have interbred if we were different species
4. If the theory is correct (and I'm not saying it is, although its hardly the first time I've seen it), it doesn't imply Autistic people actually have noticeably bigger brains - If people with higher amounts of neanderthal DNA had a brain bigger than modern humans, why wouldn't they have bigger skulls like the neanderthals? I mean, all humans have chimp DNA, but we aren't physically like chimps. so called abnormal DNA can reveal itself in ways other than appearence
5. As others have said, all non-africans have 1-4% neanderthal DNA, so its hardly abnormal
6. However, it is highly possible that individuals can have abnormally high levels
7. I don't think the brain size is the problem. If the neanderthal theory has any truth, its in the social interactions that we're programmed for (we know little about their society, but it seems possible they didn't function as groups very well), explaining our social problems. Also, a lot of us have prosopagnosia, and the theory is that we are programmed to recognise neanderthal faces instead of modern human faces.


That isn't to say that I believe it. The theory can be easily tested, but hasn't been, as far as I know. If evidence comes out either way, then I'll believe it.

How? NTs eventually learn more tolerance, or NDs learn to adapt? Other?

NT tolerance is dependent on if they need us or not. In the past we had a function, and were tolerated. Now we have no function and are not tolerated.

Tolerance works both ways rdos.

And pray tell how do we have no function? Love to see what happens if they pick our hole group up & pull it out of society, soon see how fast it will crash.

You mean our inventions put us out of work? Since I am under the impression that the skills of the neurodivegent can't be automated, is it that our inventions made life too easy for NTs, thereby making it easy to construct a working (more or less) unaccommodating society that decreases the need for our skills or tolerance for our behavior?

What about information technology? Or is it that they'd rather hire 100 NTs and pay $10 million in labor than hire one ND at $100,000, even in an age of global cutthroat competition whenever that is what it takes to get the job done?

I think he means no apparent function anymore, that our market is saturated, or appears saturated -- although it seems to me that we are needed more than ever to solve various crises such as peak you-name-it (oil, water, land, food, etc).

It even seems to me that some do not want solutions to these problems for various possible reasons that are off-topic -- although one can start new threads in the appropriate sections of the forum.

The Neanderthal correlation : Article : Nature by Jeff Hecht
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 3562a.html

Beth: "The genes for red hair and pale skin didn't match well enough to show a correlation, but I found a correlation for genes linked to other traits. There's a gene cluster linked to advanced mathematics skills, information processing, logic, analytical intelligence, concentration skills, obsession–compulsion and Asperger's syndrome. That cluster correlates very strongly. I can trace some genes back to the interglacial around 450,000 years ago, and others back to another burst of evolutionary innovation during the Eemian interglacial about 130,000 years ago." She rambled on with endless details..."

Beth:"...I found that Neanderthals lacked genes linked to successful socialization and management skills. They could count perfectly well, but they couldn't deal with groups. Socialization genes came from Sapiens..."

Jeff Hecht: "I stared at her. I couldn't tell that to the research council."

Beth:"The hybridization was successful in the Stone Age, but the environment has changed. I found that modern culture selects for socialization but against the Neanderthal traits for mathematics and intelligence," she said, and looked down. "I don't know how you'll survive when our genes are gone."

I don't know about that article. It sounds more like fiction than an actual scientific study. I like reading sci-fi sometimes, but not in scientific journals.

If it were true that Autism was linked to Homo sapiens neanderthalensis then wouldn't it be virtually impossible for Africans or people of nearly-pure African descent to have autism? Is this a fact?

PLUS if mathematical ability is linked to Neanderthal DNA, then that would mean that Africans wouldn't have the genes to do math. That's just not the case AT ALL.

I saw a famous anthropologist speak a while back--and he theorized that the ability for higher thinking, artistic creativity, and complicated tool making evolved back in Africa before Homo Sapiens ever left the continent. It was, in his opinion, due to a genetic mutation in the brains of ancient Homo Sapiens. He didn't believe that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens could interbreed.

I think it's a stretch to say we really understand DNA enough to claim that Neanderthals don't have DNA allowing them to socialize in groups well--there's not anthropological evidence to suggest they had trouble with grouping--they lived in groups. If there is any real, concrete evidence for this, outside of that fiction-like article then I'd like to see it.

"Perhaps surprisingly, Neanderthals must also have been caring: to survive disabling injury or illness requires the help of fellow clan members, paleoanthropologists say. A telling example came from an Iraqi cave known as Shanidar, 250 miles north of Baghdad, near the border with Turkey and Iran. There, archaeologist Ralph Solecki discovered nine nearly complete Neanderthal skeletons in the late 1950s. One belonged to a 40- to 45-year-old male with several major fractures. Ablow to the left side of his head had crushed an eye socket and almost certainly blinded him. The bones of his right shoulder and upper arm appeared shriveled, most likely the result of a trauma that led to the amputation of his right forearm. His right foot and lower right leg had also been broken while he was alive. Abnormal wear in his right knee, ankle and foot shows that he suffered from injury-induced arthritis that would have made walking painful, if not impossible. Researchers don’t know how he was injured but believe that he could not have survived long without a hand from his fellow man."

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... z1wTc31Gge

I am curious what DNA groups the previous article identified as being necessary for living in groups. I would think that the fundamental group-cohesion biology would lie in empathetic and caring emotions--which it seems like Neanderthals had.

The did live in small groups, but that could be because they were voracious hunters and had huge body mass--so they wouldn't be able to have large groups based on their dietary needs (the groups would need larger territories than homo sapiens groups.

Probably, depends on whether or not Sub-Sahara Africans really are 0% Neanderthal as claimed.



Again, a lot depends on admixture.



More politically correct, Afro-centric, Afro-elitist rubbish. Interbreeding is now a proven fact -- been that way for a few years now.



Not large groups. They didn't constantly meet new people and size them up quickly. They lived in areas that wouldn't even support large groups of people who breed like rabbits -- temperate climates -- at least until fossil fuels and fertilizer came along.

I don't know why you call it Afro-elitist. I think there's a lot of evidence that homo sapiens evolved in Africa, though there is that theory that they evolved spontaneously over various continents, from homo erectus, and then came together and bred--but I find that really hard to believe. And his theory for the higher-thought mutation was based in anthropological research. Dated artifacts found in Africa.

But I agree that there is evidence that neanderthals and homo sapien sapiens interbred. That anthropologist was just old-school, plus he didn't think there was enough DNA evidence (DNA testing is notoriously easy to contaminate with modern human DNA).

And even though I said that neanderthals did live in groups, I think it's valid to assume they didn't evolve the same type of social abilities as homo S. Sapiens even if there are environmental reasons for their small group size. So I take what I said about neanderthals being as social back.

Zinia is right.
Its got nothing to do with "Afrocentrism" or whatever boogeyman DSH is on about.

Its simply a fact that humans spread out of Africa, not once, but twice.

The genus homo originated in africa and then populated the whole old world.
Europe and Asia then became populated by populations of archaic humans like neanderthal, the denisovians, homo erectus, et al.

Then within africa a second group, the anatomical moderns, evolved and then they spread out into the rest of the old world. They drove the various archaics to extinction. And then went beyond even the old world to populate continents that even the archaic humans never reached like Australia and the Americas. And they became us.

The only question was whether the moderns totally wiped out the archaics, or did they do a little mixing with them before they wiped them out.

The latest data shows the latter. In certain regions some populations of living people have 1 to 5 percent archaic DNA (like neanderthal dna). So no modern population is a true "hybrid" with say, neanderthals, but some populations have some individuals (like ozzy osborne) with a little smidgen of neandertal dna.

Both Neanderthals and Moderns lived in groups. But moderns not only lived in larger groups, but the groups themselves were better able to interact with distant foreign groups for trade and alliances.

So I think that that maybe were the notion that autism is connected to Neanderthal genes comes from- modern autism spectrum people lack social skills so maybe that is their neanderthal legacy showing up. Neanderthals werent the diplomats and salesmen that the Moderns were.

Neither a fan nor a foe of the idea.

But Im officially diagnosed, and I happened to be barrel chested ( the norm for monkeys,apes, and archaic hominids including Neanderthal Man- but the exception for living humans) so who knows?

Not thiis BS again - who bumped the topic?

Just wishful thinking. Every new hypothesis or theory that turns out to be correct suffers at least a decade of unwarranted ridicule as a "crackpot" theory after being proven (or at least shown to have more information backing it), usually more like a generation. There is too much to explain way. For example, it is known that a virus inserted itself into human and Asian ape gene pools around 3 or 4 million years ago, but not in African apes.