Could AS traits be useful for solo foraging/hunting?

Post Reply New Topic

There is good cause to suspect that the sex differentials often reported/observed in those clinically diagnosed, are not representative of the actual numbers, specifically that they under-report the rate of female autistics. There is also good cause to posit sex bias in the diagnostic criteria itself and/or in clinical interpretations of ASDs (by clinicians) as being a plausible causal factor in this potential discrepancy.

I think stating that the numbers are necessarily exactly equal however, is entering into rather more speculative territory.

Thanks Pan, I do appreciate you addressing things the way you did. I respect your counters.

Yes, I am deeply interested in the ramifications of the decline of OoA II and what they mean in terms of Human Origins. Perhaps I should start a thread. It's only the origins of humankind. (!)

"Lengthy essay" Got a lot of time on my hands right now. Bear with me please; wanted to get the discussion on a healthy track.

" . . . my intent." Fair enough. I've gotten hit with that one myself. Sometimes a remark conveys the wrong intent. Now that you've clarified it, ok.

". . . I prefer to judge . . ." Me too. Still, when you see the pattern again and again, it grates. I look for it first to save time. No point wasting reading time with a bad argument/hypothesis.

"Is there some reason . . ." No, I don't think so. Just frustration with claims that are aggressive, yet clearly out-of-date. That's not aimed at you, Pan. You do seem more up-to-date than most. If you claim that you're not defending OoA II, then ok. Got it. I'd like to ask more questions here, but the problem is that I don't have the jargon of genetics, nor the intimate knowledge that you and Leif do. Tried to follow that stuff in the other thread . . . no luck. I'd need a basic course in genetics biology just to keep up.

"I do not see any reason . . ." Ah. then this is where we clearly disagree. I do. The argument I could level here is lengthy, and Leif has a broader version of it, so I'll forego that. Mine tends to start at the point of pigmentation change and the time needed for that to occur; 40,000 years is not sufficient time for pigmentation change to occur. In my mind, everything else follows from that datum, hybridizaton, behavioral traits, preservation of deleterious alleles, etc.

How have deleterious effects been preserved in the genome over the last 50,000 years? The analogy that springs to mind is this; How has sickle cell anemia been preserved in the African genome over the last 2 million years? I would claim that the same process (and I can't identify it in the same ways the you and Leif can) that preserved these "deleterious alleles" (not a sarcastic quote) also preserved, in more complex ways, the things that Leif has noted. When, by deductive reasoning (it took me years to ovreturn, in my own mind, the hard science that I thought, was represented by the mitochondrial eve stuff), I first accepted a non-OoA II way of thinking, and concluded that hybridization MUST be the answer to human origins (in Eurasia, specifically), one of the instant ramifications was that there should be a host of problematic genetically-based "diseases" in this post-hybrid population. When I saw Leif's site, it was clear that that prediction was accurate, and that he was there ahead of me. He located these diseases and quantified them. But the most astounding prediction of all, and one that I was doubtful of initially, was the likelyhood of an early date for domestication. Just last month; groundbreaking discovery. Canid domestication pushed back well into the beginnings of the upper paleolithic. Prior to that, canid domestication had been considered part of the mesolithic complex. I know of no one anywhere who had predicted that except Leif. While it's certainly true that a single prediction does not constitute conclusive evidence, it's something to note, and it does fit a pattern of predictions made by hybrid theorists. Only last month, again, the aurignacian complex of cultures, heretofore seen as a specifically AMH culture because of remains located in-site, has now been thrown up in the air as to origins. The very first AMH European culture is now seen as a possible neandertal culture. That was something that I had foreseen.

Now, what is the significance of all this? It supports the idea that the spectrum is the result of thousands of years of behavioral traits being preserved, "backed-up," reinforced in a very low demographic enviroment that was characterized, throughout the immense lengths of time of the middle and upper paleolithic. These things, the traits that create a being that HUNTS successfully, effectively over this vast time span, are deep in our genome. And that it is only the radically super-high demographic environment created by urbanization/agriculture that has brought the more deleterious alleles to light in a large, noticible way. Do you really contend that there have been no manifestations of these problematic traits, these deleterious alleles throughout European history? This isn't a straw man; I'm trying to see if this is your contention. You think that traits that prove debilitating NOW, in our present day, would have NOT been preserved in earlier environments, whether they were very low-density demographically or even high-density urb/aggy environments? Are you saying that deleterious alleles would, MUST have been "weeded out?" Very notably, humans of the upper paleolithic would have valued virutually ANY human member of their group who could locomote effectively. I cannot conceive of an early group of humans tossing away "defective" newborns. And the evidence clearly demonstrates that early European of the upper paleolithic didn't abandon crippled members of their group.

When we reach the point of today, present time, however, the gigantic overpopulation (compared to the paleolithic demographic environments) creates an entirely different dynamic, and one that is significant to the argument here. Are deep hunting suites/traits preserved and are they represented by the spectrum? I'm saying yes to that. I'm trying to understand why you think that these traits would NOT be preserved. Maybe you've gone over it prior. Explain it to me as you would to an undergrad, and I'll try to follow. I just don't have the indepth knowledge of genetic biology that you and Leif have.

i have aspergers and i do hunt and most of the time i notice whatever game we are hunting before the other people that go hunting with me

i think aspergers does help me with hunting and even off season target shooting because i have to have everything perfect before i am satisfied and i pick the center ring on the target as a acceptable shot no matter how many yards the target is placed and this perfection is what allows me to have the kind of shot in the field that i am not tracking wounded game all day after i hit it

"acute senses/perception"? Speak for yourself. I have no sense of direction and often lose track of what's going on.

If I were pressed for an objection to the above, I'd target the word 'perhaps'.


Ok,that clarifies a lot.
I will not go into a lot of details, but I think you'll understand why I found your earlier post very odd if I explain that one very big point of contention between rdos and I was rdos's claim that deleterious alleles could not be perpetuated in a gene pool. I argued very strongly that in fact they can be.
So I've never claimed that there has been no early population hybridization, and argued very strongly that deleterious alleles can be perpetuated in a gene pool. This set of circumstances made your earlier post to me, rather perplexing to say the least.




Why is 40,000 years not enough? Especially if 10,000 is enough to virtually wipe out 'the hunter suite of traits'? Suggestions for the number of loci involved (in pigmentation) range from as low as 4-6 (although arguably there is good cause to consider these numbers to be on the [very] low side).
But even assuming the truth that 40,000 years is not long enough, even assuming the truth of hybridization, and assuming for the potential preservation of deleterious alleles, I do not see how this lands us at 'autism must be involved in all this', or 'all this must be involved in autism'.

By a number of mechanisms, and I believe that the particular plausible mechanisms, in the context of the theory, and relevant facts (so far as I understand them), are unlikely to have produced the result the theory requires of them.


I'm not entirely certain off-hand, but I may have used the same example in my attempt to convince rdos that deleterious alleles can indeed be perpetuated in a gene pool.
However, I doubt that the mechanism that applies to sickle cell anemia (and the responsible alleles) is applicable in the instance of autistic spectrum disorders.
My views are not formed in the absence of any knowledge about the perpetuation of 'deleterious alleles', or in spite of such knowledge, but to an extent partially driven by my understanding of these mechanisms. Considering what I understand (and I do not claim any great expertise, but I feel confident about the basics I do understand), the outcome the theory predicts is highly unlikely.
I've never claimed the theory was impossible, just highly unlikely, and additionally, (I may have gotten around to pointing out) that perhaps it is even untestable (ie non-falsifiable).
My views are very strong, but not very absolutist. I think the theory is very unlikely, but I do not call it impossible. It might be impossible on available evidence, but not on the evidence I've availed myself of.

Why should there be these problematic genetically-based "diseases"? It does not necessarily follow from hybridization.


Perhaps my glasses are due for wipe-down, because it's about as clear as mud to me.

Personally I find this not quite so compelling as the case for AoAII and the latter was less than sufficient to convince me it was necessarily true.


I'll agree that 'all this' does not necessarily undermine the idea that the spectrum is the result of thousands of years of behavioral traits being preserved...etc, but I do not agree that it in any way indicates as much.

Why? 10,000 years ago is a very shallow slice of time evolutionarily. Why would something so universally advantageous in the context of human subsistence, until 10,000 years ago, and since then, advantageous in the context of the majority of humans the majority of the time, be deep in the genome rather than pervasively at the 'forefront' (to borrow a spacial analogy of the genome from you)?
To me this is a very important problem for 'autism makes good hunter' theories.
The most likely 'test' for such a theory is to find a hunter gather population who became substantially genetically isolated after 40,000 years ago, but before 10,000 years ago, and who never ceased hunting and gathering. The theory predicts this population would be noticeably autistic in some tangible way.
Well, such populations have been found throughout modernity, and since ethnographies became the fashion. So we have test populations and recorded information of them, taken by trained scientists, many of whom lived alongside the people they studied for years, participating in their life ways. It's implausible these populations do not disprove 'autism is a left over hunting suite' theories. We'd know if they fitted the predictions (whole autistic AS communities of super hunters would be apparent to a trained participant observer anthropologist, and it would certainly have been worth their while to notice).

Biological evolutionary processes make it unlikely, and the evidence we have, is contrary to the predictions that any 'autism is super hunter' theory necessarily makes.


I find it very unlikely that autistic individuals did not exist in European societies throughout history.

Well, I do not know about everything being so sweet, rosy and admirable as all that consistently throughout history, (certainly it's not always that nice in more modern populations), however, I think perhaps your wider point here is that deleterious alleles can be perpetuated in a gene pool, and of course that wider point is entirely correct; not only would I not argue against it, I argued that it was certainly true (in the earlier thread we've been referring to).


I think any suite of hunting traits preserved would be much more pervasively preserved.
I think the hunting suite is here.
NTs are it.
10,000 since the first tiny baby steps of some limited populations away from hunting gathering? Odds are the entire suite is preserved, not in a tiny percentage of the population, but in the majority. Why would they have lost the hunting suite if it was sufficiently adaptive to all the other life-ways (agriculture, pastoralism, urbanism) that these lifeways keep cropping up entirely independent of each other, as though there is no adaptive barrier entailed? There's no reason for the whole suite to have not been preserved, pervasively, far more pervasively than autism occurs, even if we go for the possibly hyperbolic 1 in 150 ASD rate.


Ok, I'll leave you with the above issue. If you do not find that a compelling point on which to question autism=hunter theories, I'll expand in a separate post on some of the further issues.
Again, my stance is that it is highly improbable (not impossible) and this is because my reasons are inductive, I cannot know that it is impossible (however unlikely I find it). Only a sound deductive argument would cause me to say it was impossible, but I believe the arguments against it are sufficiently compelling to justify my extreme doubt.

Speak for myself indeed.

I have a very bad sense of direction too, so bad that I've gotten lost in computer games. I've even had to invent equipment and refer to maps to help me find my way around places I should be familiar with.

I often lose track of a task and am distracted by the noise of lots of other people in a room. I can focus better alone.

However, when I focus on something or small objects in the environment really closely, I do have good perception. Other people have even commented on this.

It's not a gestalt kind of acute perception, it's more like a "laser beam" kind of focus.

I once attended a tutorial class all semester, I walked to it with another student who was in the same class (as me) held directly before the tutorial.
The last tutorial of semester, this other student was not there. I thought I could find the tutorial class by myself (I'd gone there, once a week every week the whole semester after all). I know I was in the right building, but I never did find that class. Another student suggested I should take a ball of string with me to help me navigate around the place, kind of like in the Greek myth with the minotaur I guess (I resisted the urge to pedantically describe the impracticalities of his suggestion).



Laser beam is exactly how I describe it also.
It's probably not something too helpful to hunter/gatherer subsistence activities, not unless the environment is free from predators (including human enemies) or one takes a 'security/watch person' with them. There is just no way I would notice a predator sneaking up on me when in 'laser beam attention' mode. Heck, I cannot even notice people shouting my name at me when I'm in the 'attention zone'.