McAnulty
Toucan
Joined: May 09, 2012
Posts: 258
Location: Montreal
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 Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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| I think a combination of genetics and environmental factors is then only explanation that makes sense, and this seems to be the consensus of the scientific community. |
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bnky
Velociraptor
Joined: Nov 20, 2011
Posts: 479
Location: Kent, England
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| Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 7:50 pm Post subject: Re: Neanderthal Theory - any credibility? |
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| Sirunus wrote: | | The fact that the Eurasian population have higher rates of autism... |
Where did he find this so-called "fact"? I've read that the distribution of ASDs is homogenous throughout the human race. ( I do wonder how they discovered that, of course) |
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deltafunction
Cool cool cool
Joined: Jun 05, 2012
Age: 21
Posts: 1088
Location: Lost
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| Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 8:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Blownmind wrote: | | deltafunction wrote: | | considering how small the Neanderthal population was (10,000 max) compared with the human population (30,000 in the area at the time?)... and who knows how many occurrences humans breeding with Neanderthals happened... The length of time that has passed and the growth of the human species would, most likely, make the percentage of Neanderthal dna in humans much smaller than it would be for the first generation. So if we weren't looking at any other factor except for Neanderthal DNA causing autism, then cases would get milder and milder until autism didn't exist at all. |
Well, thats where evolution comes in. The strongest attributes survive.  |
Lol, so where are the Neanderthals today, hmm? Clearly they were the strongest race of the two  (just kidding, but Darwin is crying at the moment)
| Sirunus wrote: | | The article implies that white people became the superior race thanks to the Neanderthal blood in them, and even says the success of Western Civilization that dominated the globe came from the Neanderthal blood European people had in them at the price of autism and other neurological disorders. It also struck me as treating Sub-Saharan Africans like almost a different species, even saying white people might be more closely related to Neanderthals than to black people. |
Lol yeah, that definitely seems like a stretch to me. Does that mean that African-Americans are immune to Autism, unless they are mixed somewhere along the line? I know a kid who has it, and besides, anything you look up on internet will tell you that they are most likely to be misdiagnosed as having Oppositional Defiance Disorder when it is really autism.
Honestly, I don't think the theory is even worth discussion since it has no proof at all, but hey, this is fun. |
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Zinia
Deinonychus
Joined: Sep 23, 2011
Age: 30
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:36 pm Post subject: |
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| Blownmind wrote: |
Whats the percentage of Neadnerthal in each race? Do they correlate to the IQ graphs? |
No, not even close. As I said before, the study of Neanderthal DNA in various races consisted of studying FIVE people of different races. I think that's pretty loose evidence to start assigning amounts of Neanderthal DNA in various races.
Also--that graph wouldn't even support the argument at ALL since "Hispanic" people are basically European and Native American, and Native Americans migrated out of Asia WAY after Neanderthals supposedly injected their DNA into the species.
And IQ IS just a number. |
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deltafunction
Cool cool cool
Joined: Jun 05, 2012
Age: 21
Posts: 1088
Location: Lost
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| Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 10:43 pm Post subject: |
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In my opinion, IQ is biased anyways towards Eurasians, or specifically, North Americans and Europeans. If you had to create an intelligence test, wouldn't you want to score the highest too?
Lol, but if you're looking for some sort of evidence that one culture is a superior race, I'm sure there are statistics out there to help you out.
_________________
Your Aspie score: 93 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 109 of 200
You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits |
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Blownmind
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 19, 2012
Age: 33
Posts: 823
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 2:53 am Post subject: |
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| Moonpenny wrote: | | People who are severely affected by autism are far less likely to breed than other members of the population; people affected by AS are probably rather less likely to breed. This would mean that conditions like severe regressive autism would largely be 'bred out' after hundreds of thousands of generations, and only AS would still be occurring, possibly in reducing numbers. |
Perhaps people severly affected by autism was what we would consider mildly affected hundres of thousands of generations ago, and what we see today is actually their version on mildly affected..? Beauty changes, perhaps autistic people were considered the most beautiful sought after people at one point...?
| Moonpenny wrote: | | But if in most cases activation is needed, and the conditions for that activation weren't present aeons ago, then the genes could have been passed on silently. Only when the conditions were right for activation would the disorders become visible, and the better those conditions, the greater the numbers of individuals involved. |
We have no way of knowing if the conditions for an activation like that were or were not present aeons ago. At some point, personality had nothing to do with evolution / how humanoids breeded, thats a fairly new idea. Rape has not always been taboo. And like you suggest, dorment genes might have been passed on silently and evolution hasn't had any way of weeding those genes out.
| Moonpenny wrote: | | If this theory, or some version of it, is right, it means that in recent decades we've been experiencing those conditions very acutely and that's part of the reason (along with increased likelihood of diagnosis) for the apparent increase in autism. It also means we can't really blame the Neanderthals. The genes were perfectly all right when they had them! |
Psychology is only seconds old from an evolutionary viewpoint. There have been loners / village idiots / eccentric people around way before psychology was born. Neanderthals, apparently, did not hunt socially, so they did not need those abilities. When it comes to the genes being perfectly all right when they had them, I suppose that would be correct, but a mix of genes does not always produce the correct result, and evolution weeds out the bad results. If at some point, somehow we got mixed in with Neanderthals, then there are bound to be some "start up problems" in our infancy, which we still are in, and evolution is still chopping down the weed.
| deltafunction wrote: | | Blownmind wrote: | | Well, thats where evolution comes in. The strongest attributes survive. |
Lol, so where are the Neanderthals today, hmm? Clearly they were the strongest race of the two |
"lol" all you like, but if some part of neanderthal DNA survived(which some here say is generally known), it was obviously not as pure Neanderthal, only certain attributes have survived.
(I get that many look at this theory as bullcrap and a joke, but to those I say; "everyone once thought the world were flat". I look at theories like this with sceptisism, but I don't write them off completely just because its the general consensus of world, unless I see proof.)
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I read this Neanderthal theory 1-2 months ago, and laughed. It's like conspiracy theories, I thought. They have taken well known facts, twisted them and found correlations statisticly that does not really prove anything. But the more I see people laughing about it now, the more I feel the need to take it seriously. ...there is something wrong with me.
_________________
AQ: 42/50 || SQ: 32/80 || IQ(RPM): 138 || IRI-empathytest(PT/EC/FS/PD): 10(-7)/16(-3)/19(+3)/19(+10) || Alexithymia: 148/185 || Aspie-quiz: AS 133/200, NT 56/200 |
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Ellingtonia
Pileated woodpecker
Joined: Oct 10, 2011
Age: 21
Posts: 185
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 3:40 am Post subject: |
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It seems probable that there was some interbreeding between humans and neanderthals, but from what I can tell any talk of this giving the 'hybrids' an evolutionary advantage or causing autism seems to be merely speculation.
A quote from Richard E. Green, one of the authors of the study: "The scenario is not what most people had envisioned. We found the genetic signal of Neanderthals in all the non-African genomes, meaning that the admixture occurred early on, probably in the Middle East, and is shared with all descendants of the early humans who migrated out of Africa. The signal is sparsely distributed across the genome, just a 'bread crumbs' clue of what happened in the past. If there was something that conferred a fitness advantage, we probably would have found it already by comparing human genomes." |
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deltafunction
Cool cool cool
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Age: 21
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 6:46 am Post subject: |
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| Blownmind wrote: | | deltafunction wrote: | | Blownmind wrote: | | Well, thats where evolution comes in. The strongest attributes survive. |
Lol, so where are the Neanderthals today, hmm? Clearly they were the strongest race of the two |
"lol" all you like, but if some part of neanderthal DNA survived(which some here say is generally known), it was obviously not as pure Neanderthal, only certain attributes have survived.
(I get that many look at this theory as bullcrap and a joke, but to those I say; "everyone once thought the world were flat". I look at theories like this with sceptisism, but I don't write them off completely just because its the general consensus of world, unless I see proof.)
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I read this Neanderthal theory 1-2 months ago, and laughed. It's like conspiracy theories, I thought. They have taken well known facts, twisted them and found correlations statisticly that does not really prove anything. But the more I see people laughing about it now, the more I feel the need to take it seriously. ...there is something wrong with me. |
I'm not so sure what's so great about the Neanderthals that makes people think they were genetically superior. Out of the theories of their demise, some are that they could no cope with a changing climate, that they had to compete with humans when humans migrated to the same area, and they had lost, that there was a genocide by the humans, that their running ability was worse because of stocky limbs, and that they inherited a pathogen from humans and though humans were immune, they were not. Sure, there is also a possibility of extinction by cross-breeding, but that's just one of the theories.
And yes, if a species dies off because of competition, that is evolution at its work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction_hypotheses
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You seem to have both Aspie and neurotypical traits |
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Sirunus
Blue Jay
Joined: Nov 09, 2007
Age: 26
Posts: 83
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 7:25 am Post subject: Re: Neanderthal Theory - any credibility? |
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| bnky wrote: | | Sirunus wrote: | | The fact that the Eurasian population have higher rates of autism... |
Where did he find this so-called "fact"? I've read that the distribution of ASDs is homogenous throughout the human race. ( I do wonder how they discovered that, of course) |
I kind've took his word (and my friend's) for it. Apparently there are studies saying that Sub-Saharan Africans have lower rates of autism. If anyone can shed any light on this, I would be grateful.
But my friend really wants to believe that he is some sort of throwback to the Neanderthals and is convinced that autism came from them as well as Western Civilization. He always talks about certain subjects like he is an expert where he clearly has limited knowledge. Whenever I pointed out flaws in the autism-Neanderthal theory, he responded: "Are you a geneticist?"
Also, I have read from a couple of sources that genetic differences between different racial groups only accounts for around 15% of human genetic variation. The rest of human genetic variation occurs within racial groups. Compared with Chimpanzees, our closest living relative, there isn't much genetic variation amongst humankind. |
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Blownmind
Phoenix
Joined: Feb 19, 2012
Age: 33
Posts: 823
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:43 am Post subject: |
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| deltafunction wrote: | | Blownmind wrote: | | deltafunction wrote: | | Blownmind wrote: | | Well, thats where evolution comes in. The strongest attributes survive. |
Lol, so where are the Neanderthals today, hmm? Clearly they were the strongest race of the two |
"lol" all you like, but if some part of neanderthal DNA survived(which some here say is generally known), it was obviously not as pure Neanderthal, only certain attributes have survived. |
I'm not so sure what's so great about the Neanderthals that makes people think they were genetically superior.
(...)
And yes, if a species dies off because of competition, that is evolution at its work. |
I don't know why you quoted me before writing the part about superiority, cause I never called them that, I simply stated that the strongest genes survies, aka what is known as evolution.
If a species dies off, but a hybrid of that species survive, that would mean the hybrid is strongest..
_________________
AQ: 42/50 || SQ: 32/80 || IQ(RPM): 138 || IRI-empathytest(PT/EC/FS/PD): 10(-7)/16(-3)/19(+3)/19(+10) || Alexithymia: 148/185 || Aspie-quiz: AS 133/200, NT 56/200 |
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McAnulty
Toucan
Joined: May 09, 2012
Posts: 258
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:57 am Post subject: |
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| About Sub Saharan people not having as much Autism, I have no facts on it, but many of the people I know from Africa have told me that they don't have much access to doctors over there and they don't go to medical professionals as quickly for things, they tend to go only when someone is seriously ill. It may be possible that because of their culture even when they come here they may not run to the doctor when they think something is different about their child. I wonder how they can correctly state the percentage of people with Autism when the culture is unlikely to look for such a diagnosis. |
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vermontsavant
My father 1934 to 2010
Joined: Dec 08, 2010
Age: 37
Posts: 1778
Location: Bellows Falls,Vermont USA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 9:13 am Post subject: |
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I dont think it is an issue of genetic superiority at all.However neanderthals lived for milliniums in cold and inhospitibal climates,so they had to work so hard just to survive and this may have given them an edge later on down the line because they may have evolved better work habbitts as a matter of survival.civilization developed in the middle east,africa and the metaterainien sea because of warm climates and the easy availability of recources.however siberian people like huns and turks came southwest to escape the bitter cold and with there strenth conquered everything they encountered.also goths,alans,scythians,bulgars living in what would be today the ukraine with there strenth conquered rome and once these people made so strong by the freezing cold of russia got there hands on the technology of rome,greece,persia,syria etcc.....these factors gave way to hundreds of years of northern european domination and also the ottoman empire as well and the rise of islam because the turks were from siberia like the huns likely an exiled tribe of mongols.the original inhabitents of turkey were greeks.it was mainly because constantinople was the biggest city the turks conquered and so after that istambul became the central artery of turkic culture hence modern day turkey.the original homeland of the turks was southwest siberia before coming west.you see this factor in the US as well.industry developed in the northeast because it needed to because it is cold and to hilly and rocky for farmland to be profitable.in the south you have flat fertile land and warm climate and even the cold midwest is flat and the farmland is fertile.so the south and midwest didnt need to develop better technology for its survival
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Sirunus
Blue Jay
Joined: Nov 09, 2007
Age: 26
Posts: 83
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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I think the Neanderthal-autism link theory rests maninly on this article:
The Neanderthal theory
What do you guys think? I haven't read the whole article yet, but I've seen it being ridiculed a couple of times. |
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friedmacguffins
Toucan
Joined: Feb 11, 2010
Posts: 265
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| Posted: Wed Jun 06, 2012 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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Firstly, let me out myself as a Young Earth Creationist.
I have consumed much scientific media, but am admittedly not considered a scientist.
From my informal perspective, reconstructed hominid remains all tend to resemble blacks, whites, asians, or animal.
To say that whites came from the remains, which look most white, is not a revelation to me.
FWIW, I am not considered very neurotypical. 23andme has a test for the presence of Neanderthal genes, and mine shows just a fraction of a percent above normal. This doesn't seem to be a very strong correlation. |
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Sirunus
Blue Jay
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Age: 26
Posts: 83
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| Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2012 4:24 pm Post subject: |
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How could one know that autism was inherited from the Neanderthals when we know so little about autism in the first place? We know that autism is probably at least partly genetic, and we know that it's not just one gene that causes autism but a combination of different genes. But environmental factors also to appear to play an important role, such as the amount of hormones present when you were inside your mother's womb. So firstly, you would need to explain why environmental factors appear to have an affect if autism is purely genetic. Second, not only would you need to identify all the genes that cause autism, but you would need to trace them all back to the Neanderthals. Third, purebred Africans would not get autism at all if this were true.
A lot of the proponents of this Neanderthal-causes-autism-theory (and calling it a theory is giving it too much credit) appear to have a racist agenda. They imply that people with Neanderthal genes are genetically superior to purebred Home sapiens, aka Sub-Saharan Africans, aka black people. One such article on neanderthalproject.com makes comments like "we hybrids rule the planet," and makes disparaging comments about black people such as "just look at Sub-Sahara Africa and you tell me." He refered to black people as our "pure Home sapien cousins", almost like as if they were a different species from us. The guy even had the gall to claim that because of Neanderthal genes, white people's brains work more efficiently than black people's! There seems to be some underlying autism supremacy movement behind all this too. Because they believe the genes that cause autism that was inherited from the Neanderthals made us superior, they believe that autistic people are genetically superior to neurotypicals. They believe that because white neaurotypicals carry Neanderthal DNA and thus autistic DNA, that they are superior to pure neaurotypicals, the people that don't have any Neanderthal genes and apparently never get autism. And who are these pure neurotypicals? Black people.
There appears to be clearly a racist agenda behind some of the proponents of this so-called theory. |
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