Neurodiversity

Time Machine: Cause of Autism #2

Though little discussed, the ability to send our children back in time is an ability all of us have. This ability has to do with how we choose a mate.

It has been estimated that our lineage of homo departed Africa around 80,000 - 50,000 years ago. From there, the various branchings of humanity began. There is evidence of overlap with Neanderthals in Europe, but there is no certainty of conjugational relations. Regardless, as bands then tribes grew separated by greater geographic spans, the last common descendant between diverging lineage threads grew further apart in distance and in time.

Academics have hypothesized several reasons that humans left Africa. I would suggest that robust language facility had no small amount to do with the compulsion to explore. We might conclude that language was well established because across the planet, most cultures display a relatively small number of left-handers, anywhere from 2-12 %. This number suggests that those that left Africa used the same brain we right-handers have today–larger left lobe with smaller corpus callosum–as opposed to the hypothesized alternative, earlier left-hander model of both lobes being similarly sized with larger corpus callosum.

We might also consider whether those myths and stories that seem to have roots in cultures all across the world might have been carried from their continent of origin. In other words, we might call those bands and tribes of Africa the serpent people.

Charles Darwin was a pigeon fancier. He tracked in detail the lineage of breeds, concluding that the human-dictated evolutionary trajectories of these birds satisfactorily informed an understanding of how nature compelled an evolutionary transformation. Breeders selected specific pigeon traits and watched them blossom into unique characteristics, features often deeply debilitating if the birds were allowed to return to the wild. Nature, Darwin concluded, would select traits with survival utility, not a human predilection for what was visually unique, unless sexual selection was in play.

Over at least 50,000 years, humans found homes and proceeded to breed and play. As concepts of the ideal mate changed with time, lineages diverged as fashions for different looks and behaviors modified with the latest fad. Some peoples in the North preferred the light-skinned mates that stayed healthy soaking up the vitamin D. Other peoples in the North preferred a chubby mate that stayed healthy with reserves of energy. Skin color, body types, personality characteristics, behavior variations modified like the pigeons bred by fanciers seeking novelty. The less contact societies had with one another, the more unique these variations could become.

Humans have been breeding pigeons for over 2000 years. It has been almost 2000 years since some pigeon lineage threads have last had contact with one another. Darwin made an observation. When two pigeons were bred from widely diverging strains, the chicks revealed features of the last ancestor that the parents had in common. In this case, the rock pigeon, which is still a common breed today.

Parents with diverging ethnic threads with little or no lineage contact for tens of thousands of years send their children speeding off into the past. When they return, emerging from the womb with characteristics of both parents, they often carry with them additional features retained by the last common ancestor of the breeding pair.

It is a fact that breeders often encourage this process of cross-breeding as they seek robust features from the past. Breeding separate lines, threads too long divergent, sometimes demands some old genes to provide strength and balance.

Enter the autistic. Misinterpreted as a disorder, autism is a reservoir of human features reappearing at just the right time to be integrated into a culture deeply in need of strength and balance. Consider which features of the autistic we need most desperately today.

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Proceed to author’s FREE book download on this subject (The book is called Evolution, Autism and Social Change). 10 minute introductory video here.

Andrew Lehman on 10/5/09 in Evolution, featured | 1 Comment | Read More