The Neanderthal hypothesis for the origin of autism resurfaces from time to time on WP over the years.
Its plausible that the Neanderthals (who lived in smaller bands than did anatomical moderns) were less skilled at networking, intra tribal office politics, inter tribal diplomacy, etc than our Anatomically modern ancestors. And though the anatomical modern invaders drove the Neanderthals to extinction the two groups did interbreed. Other traits have been traced to Neanderthal genes in modern people. So Autism MIGHT have something to do with having Archaic hominid genes.
She only talks about it for a few seconds at one point late in the video (which, like most of her work on Utube, is rather scatterbrained and all over the place).
The stem cells in question were taken from modern living humans (not Neanderthal fossils), but humans with stretches of DNA "likely from Neanderthals". And they grew little blobs of brain cells from these modern cells with possible DNA from Neanderthals. And according to that young lady some of these "little brains" were autistic like in behavior. Maybe. Have yet to be able to track down that part about autism. But maybe they have found some evidence that points to it.
26 Apr 2024, 6:54 pm
