Remnants of the past or the prototype for the future?

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I have little knowledge on human genetics and proven theories on the subject, but ive been thinking a lot about AS and what it might be. heres some random rambling, what do you think?

I have no solid belief as to what we aspies are. Are humans who carry the remnants of the Neanderthal or other older 'human type bipedal primates' DNA OR we are actually evolution in progress?

My thoughts behind the Neanderthal theory is that since their brains for social interaction were not as developed as homo sapiens they survived by having repetitive behaviors based on survival. i.e waking up every day and going to hunt if you were a hunter, forage if you were a forager or female, nurse the children if you were female, gather usable material then leisure time all in the same fashion for thousands of years. I believe it was something just programmed into their DNA (our DNA) to ensure than each neanderthal could at least function in their primitive form of society. If we aspies were thrust into the ancient world of 50,000 BC with no technological capital (no preexisting knowledge of technologies that we ourselves are not responsible for inventing) could you not see every day being the same patterns everyday? waking up, going to hunt, forage, look for usable material, being with your family and clan....obviously we'd be more intelligent and innovative but thats because we arnt neanderthals, we are mostly homo sapien with perhaps hints of Neanderthal genes. You cant say you would go try build a compound with draw bridges and towers and make bows and arrows or something like that- those are part of technological capital that have been transmitted to us over thousands of years of human development, you would think its common sense but think harder. You are born into that world such notions would not exist, we take airplanes for granted now and understand aerodynamics but did people think it was common sense in 1400, Nope. We'd tinker yes, but i doubt that much progress would be made if basic needs like food, security, strength in numbers, shelter were in constant danger of not being available we'd probably focus all our energy into trying to fufil those needs and be content with that. Aspies have the ability to excel at specific things but I generally believe that progress and change come with groups of people that work TOGETHER.

As homo sapiens evolved elsewhere they turned out with more more brain power and thus were able to amplify the skills of each homo sapien....think of it as having 10 neanderthals and 10 homo sapiens. If the base brain capacity and ability to carry out tasks of each Neanderthal was say 5 and a Homo Sapien as 10 (they get double for increased intelligence and ability to work together in more complex ways) then wouldnt the net value of then Neanderthals be 50 while the value of the Homo Sapiens be 100?

My theory for how Aspies are evolution in progress is fairly similar but with a different twist. Maybe our Homo Sapien ancestors were actually just as social as any NT but they didnt have the social or technological captial that we have today that it didnt really matter if they were social or not. That and Neanderthals were actually just "dumb" and died out because of inferior intelligence and inability to compete with homo sapiens for food. Everything we have today in terms of technology is capital from hundreds of generations of humans who came before us and figured things out. Once agriculture and sedintary lifestyle took root in the human race most societies developed occupations and classes based on skill. Warriors fought, artisans made goods, farmers grew food...what if, just what if it is possible that our actions in our lives actually leave some kind of "imprint" on our DNA? Like if your ancestors for hundreds of years were farmers you would have a natural affinity for anything of that nature...or if your ancestors were of a warrior class you would be aggressive and athletic? I know that dietary patterns of your ancestors actually affect your genetics and who you are, so its not crazy to ponder that maybe behaviors could be ingrained into the DNA as well.

Therefore, we aspies could be the "next step" forward in that we are able to excel in our given field of interest;/occupation once we find it. Imagine the future if this were true. If in the future people all evolved to be aspies, wouldnt society be super structured and super stable? Everybody would have to take aptitude tests and figure out what occupation they would excel at...that would help society as a whole because only the best people would be doing their respective jobs. . No more spoiled rich ppl getting jobs they arent qualified for because their dad knows the CEO of some company....then again if that goes on for thousands of years I think our evolution would just stagnate and we would regress into being "dumb" again from lack of innvativeness....then the whole cycle repeats itself all over again. its a chicken or the egg kind of thing.

I know none of this has any basis on scientific facts or research (except for the dietary patterns part, thats been proven) but Ive actually thought about this when bored and admittedly after smoking blunts. what are some of your theories and thoughts?

we dont have "powers and renumerations" so we arent contractors sadly. Would definitely make life more interesting if that was the case. Yes I know, I became a Darker Than Black Addict. XD

All quotes are from the TC. Interesting post, successfully distracted me from my biology study (it's not hard, it's quite boring stuff.)

Evolution happens to groups (read, entire societies,) not to individuals. Unless two groups were kept rigidly separate, and natural selection encouraged success at a task (such as farming, or war,) to the point where only those who were successful could reproduce, would we see some kind of genetic difference between different classes. This is, however, a very artificial scenario, historically, there has always been some interbreeding between classes (even if limited,) and the least successful individuals in a field usually get around to reproducing anyway (barring death through bad luck.) Society may celebrate it's best warriors or scholars, but it doesn't limit reproduction to it's best warriors or scholars.


I've read about this (due to methylation of DNA,) but I haven't seen any evidence suggesting that behaviors such as professions are ingrained in the DNA.

In older societies, however, they are culturally ingrained (a farmer's child will often be taught how to farm, and be expected to keep the farm going,) which is pretty similar.


The main problem here is that evolution doesn't care about how successful one is at what they do, it cares about how much they reproduce. Hell, higher IQ people are more likely to be virgins, and success in a field doesn't exactly mandate reproductive success.

If anything, the aspie's lack of social skills makes them less likely to reproduce, and less likely to pass on their genes, no matter how good they are at their field.

That said, I don't doubt that aspies can be important "movers" in society - just look at Charles Darwin, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, et al. I don't however think they represent any kind of advancement in evolution (ignoring the fact that to talk of "advancing" evolution is logically unsound.)

Good points samsa, I havnt taken bio since early high school so...yeah, i now remember how half that doesnt make logical sense. You're studying biology, what do you think Aspergers is? More realistically its probably more alone the lines of my first line of thought. Someone once mentioned that the ADD-like symptoms of AS could be a left over behaviour from our earliest ancestors who were constantly on the move for food. They an attention span just long enough to look for food and keep moving much like how birds (and other animals obv) do. Not sure how plausible that theory is though.

Time and space are cyclical.

Not psychology, biology

Pretty much none of that stuff I learned in school, evolutionary biology was my special interest a couple of years back, and I learned a lot of evolutionary biology as a result. I don't really know a great deal about Aspergers, although I would be interested in knowing more. My (uneducated) guess is that's it's a very complex trait that can't really be reduced to a single gene. LFA would obviously be discouraged by natural selection (as they can't take care of themselves, and don't exactly have high reproductive chances,) but I'm not really sure where AS and HFA fall. It's probably some kind of complex interplay of genes and environmental factors, so it's quite difficult to understand.