Biological variation and evolution happen over a long time, the trend might be as close as a thousand years, so most are the result of Viking expansion in 900.
Who would you pack up in a boat to drop on a southern shore to conqure or die? Aspie traits would rank high, few friends, low production. A lack of common sense would also lead to the overraction seen in Berserkers, Aspie Super Powers turned loose. HI! My Special Interest is seeing how many I can slaughter.
A quarter second edge is everything in combat. We got Focus.
I do not agree that a lack of social was a survival defect. Those would be the ones out looking for food, looking over the next hill, and seeing another group coming, would not be going back where they are heading. Let those three guys who hang around the village and push aspies around handle it. They are tough, they can take on twenty. Now the women are also out gathering food, perhaps I should tell them to not go back, we can figure something out.
We are also observers who think like animals. Mighty hunters can go in groups and chase herds, I will blend into a rock and wait along a trail that five deer a day pass close. While the guys are talking about who can throw a spear the farthest, I will be sitting on a hillside watching the game move, then waiting where a lunge and a stab makes throwing unnessasary.
Who thought up the bent limb and rabbit snare? Women have not changed, give them a few dead rabbits a week, you will get something in return.
As Temple said, it was not the guys sitting around the fire who made the first spear. Most innovation comes from the solo hunter, and we do solo well.
The first spear was made to kill some of the guys around the campfire, the gang that made life hard on everyone. Evolution speeded up then. Natural selection is not just based on pluses, but in cancelling out some zeros. Go tell the women that Og is not coming back from the hunt, pass out some dead rabbits, and life goes on.
We have better senses, we see it move, hear it, before anyone else. We also have better night vision.
It may be a disability for city living. Cities are a recent experiment, and every time they failed. Catal Huyuk, abandoned in 8000 bc, the Mayans, about 900ad, Rome, 400ad, none were built till 1700, it has not turned out well. Cities produce bad evolution. Every time we go back to thinly scattered over the land.
Nature cannot take a short term view, some must survive the next ice age, and some are just no longer needed. When one seed planted produced three, every plowman was needed, then machines took over, and one seed produces seven. Factory hands were needed, but now machines produce much faster, and on the other side of the world. One way or another the rest were living off of basic production, selling clothes, homes, services, which are no longer in demand.
Now they want the thinkers and innovaters to create new products, and revive their way of life. Those innovaters are the ones jocks slammed into lockers for fun, who would rather deal with the Chinese now. What became of Rome? They did not migrate, they just died off when their way of life failed. Evolution on a larger scale.
When most lose their place in the social network, they lose everything, they cannot function alone. When we lose our place in the social network, nothing changes.
Even from the start of our era, from the French, The Song of Roland, Spain, El Cid, Russia, Prince Ivan, the names continued, but many governments have fallen. Nothing lasts.
Somehow, we are still around. Adapted to living through hard times better than most. When the population declines, we don't, and when there are enough of us, it starts up again.
No one here said, "My Credit Default Swaps are worthless." We are disabled to the upside, and biologically adapted to the down side.
When everyone around you panics, a lack of empathy pays off.
03 Nov 2009, 9:17 am
