Autism brought an advantage back in the day

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Autism:
How It May Have Helped Humanity:

"Experts suggest that autism never had to sneak past the survival-of-the-fittest checkpoint to make it all the way to modern times. Instead, it proudly marched through the gates with a saber-toothed carcass in one hand, casually clubbing the guards over the head as it went.

While autistic people often have trouble interacting with others, the condition also provided unexpected advantages for a hunter-gatherer: Namely, it switched on the badass parts of their brain. While most of our ancestors were busy hunting and foraging in groups, the ones on the autism spectrum preferred a more solitary lifestyle. These people were able to efficiently operate alone; the time and effort that others spent socializing and drawing crappy stick figures on cave walls were instead channeled into things like tracking, getting to know the terrain, and other Rambo stuff".

This was from cranked so it's not that professional, but it brings an interesting point on how it would've helped to survive in the hunter gatherer days.

So ... while most of our pre-historic social ancestors were dancing around the campfire and. begging the spirits for a successful hunt, our more solitary ancestors were mawing down on fresh bison flank and figuring out how to get the rest of the carcass back to the village ...

Nice hypothesis! It certainly gives me a good feeling to think that people like me would be bringing home the bison while the hunting group was still sleeping.

"Crappy stick figures"? That's cute. It gave me a laugh today. I needed that, too.

<--- Is well aware of the Solitary Forager Hypothesis. Has written about it on his blog, too.

Paleolithic people didn't draw crappy stick figures on cave walls.
They did beautiful remarkably lifelike drawings of animals that were the most difficult and dangerous to hunt, like bison, on the innermost areas of the cave.
Probably as a sort of magic ceremony to insure success of the hunt.
I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of that artwork was done by autistic people as they were more likely to have the status of something like shaman while less clumsy people went out on the hunt. Maybe.
And it took a lot of hunters and cooperation to bring down those animals.
Solitary hunters were more likely to hunt rabbits.

Lone people could not hunt big game armed with a spear; that would have been ridiculous.

Autistic people, like Marybird stated, probably were shamans. Otherwise, they might have been tool innovators or artistic geniuses. They would have had their share of the food owing to their other contributions and their ability to provide tangible and intangible aid to the hunters.

Yeah, the first spears were probably long sticks sharpened on one end that enabled hunters to keep a distance from the animal, otherwise they would have been mangled by large game animals. and it took a lot of them to bring down an animal safely.
Women didn't hunt because human babies and children were vulnerable to predatory animals and had to stay with their mothers who did the foraging and digging for root and tubers with digging sticks, and also people had to stay near the cave to keep the cave fires going and fashion warm clothing out of animal hides and sinew. Everybody contributed and shared.
Early people didn't have much free time except that they were able to stay up later into the night because of the cave fires which had to be kept going at all times to deter predators.

That's why it's a theory.Both are interesting nonetheless.

So they were " Rogues " ?

Here is the cracked post: http://www.cracked.com/article_20905_5- ... tages.html

It's quite possibly baloney, but it pleases me to read it, and I wish I could lock the directors of Autism Speaks and the contributors on AS Partners in a smelly room until they've each written a 20,000-word essay of appreciation on its merits and how they will use it to modify their attitude. I feel the cracked post contains a great deal of allegorical truth and I hope it helps to give us the self-confidence essential to our quest to convince the world that we're actually OK, and to attain the recognition and social status we have so long been denied.

<--- Neanderthal Robin wouldn't have used a spear, either. Recipe for suicide. He would've probably thought outside the box like autistics are known for and design some kind of clever trap over a large hole or some other elaborate ensnaring device. If backwoods rednecks can do it, he can, too.

And now, some observations about the Solitary Forager Hypothesis for your dining pleasure.

http://www.care2.com/causes/the-autism- ... hesis.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22947969

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 122849.htm

http://www.observedimpulse.com/2011/02/ ... utism.html

Humans are not solitary animals, solitary early humans would die pretty quickly and wouldn't pass on their genes(altho I guess maybe they could with a club to the head... ) Now, there might of always been a certain number people like this and our DNA tells us that only about 40% human males throughout history reproduced(as opposed to 80% of human females) so I don't see how there was ever really an advantage as far evolution is involved. With a devolved society tho perhaps there were much fewer social expectations and rules for Autistics to violate and feel as others. Some sort of developmental/environmental phenomenon, I don't know if the answer is hidden in our genes or what. I'm not sure evolution can give us the answer as to why we are the way we are, at least not yet.

I've read the posts on AS Partners. Those women label their a$$hole husband's as having AS. How dreadfully inaccurate.

I think society in general has much more standards on people in terms of how they treat their relationships.

In the past, it was generally acceptable for men to blue collar workers, provide for the household, come home, watch TV and to not really spend much time with their wife or kids. Now, you can't be a caveman. You have to be good at communication, compromise, being a little bit elegant and refined. You can't just narrowly focus on one thing, but you have to be well-rounded and versatile.

Why when ever we look for evolutionary psychology bullcrap we got back to hunters and gathers? Humans have evolved a lot sense then? I think autism would have been much more advantageous in early agricultural civilizations than in hunter-gather society, that's something just misconstruing autism to be the "strong silent man" type, when that's really not what autism is at all. Again, if they had any role in hunter gather societies, it would probably be as shamans. Also it needs to be considered what autistic WOMEN would have done back then, they definitely weren't hunting mammoth, but I'm sure some autistic traits could make a woman very desirable to a cave man. Either way, advantages of autistic traits in women definitely needs to be considered more, as women are more likely to pass autistic genes on to children than men are.

(quote="redrobin62"<--- Neanderthal Robin wouldn't have used a spear, either. Recipe for suicide. He

would've probably thought outside the box like autistics are known for and design some kind of clever trap

over a large hole or some other elaborate ensnaring device. If backwoods rednecks can do it, he can, too.")

He would have been inventing a new technology.
Actually a trap like that made out of wood would not have survived into the fossil records. The only evidence that they used spears is the fossilized stone spear heads that were attached to them.
Ancient people very well could have been trapping animals.

It is very unlikely there would have been solitary hunters, it would have been very dangerous. Other predatory animals have large sharp teeth and are stronger than humans.

Thousands of years of using fire to cook food has reduced the size of teeth and jaws in early humans.
Humans no longer had as much ability to climb into the treetops for protection as their predecessors.
Thousands of years of harnessing fire allowed them to sleep safely in caves on the ground and they no longer had the ape like shoulder design and prehensile feet useful for climbing.

And this all happened by the time Homo Erectus appeared in the fossil records 1.5 million years ago.
His broad shoulders and narrow waste and pelvic cavity indicated that he no longer climbed into the treetops to sleep and he had been eating a diet of cooked food long enough for that intestinal change to evolve.
And Homo Erectus was the first early hominid to venture into cold northern climates because he had already mastered the technology of fire and clothing construction.

Early humans were vulnerable and would have to have been cooperative to survive.
But that's not to say their neurology could not have been quite different from modern humans.

It wasn't until about 10-12 thousand years ago that the technology of agriculture sprung up simultaneously in fertile valleys near river basins and with that the formation of permanent villages, personal property and the accumulation of wealth.
And with accumulation of wealth came powerful ruling classes, organized religion, and social hierarchy.

It is possible that what we think of as the negative attributes of the neurotypical mind, such as social manipulation as we know it today, is a more recent adaption for navigating those social hierarchies.
And what we consider the positive attributes of the autistic mind, such as innovating new technologies, are very, very ancient in the evolution of homonids.