Neanderthal theory and race

Post Reply New Topic

In the case of crime, it seems obvious there is a huge environmental component. The example of violence is much less obvious, and must be attributed to both genetic and environmental components. Violence could also possibly have epigenetic components. But, as I wrote, I've never claimed that violence or crime would be neurodiversity traits, which means it is beside the point. I would suspect that if I researched these traits, both would show a considerable correlation with other known environmental traits, and thus would be dropped quickly as they would not relate to neurodiversity, at least not directly.



Not from my position. Violence is an adaption among young neurotypical males to attract mates. It is related to the social adaptations of neurotypicals.



Not so. This was not adaptive in the Neanderthal context, and thus young Aspie males does not have this tendency naturally. They might become prone to violence because of environmental factors, but they have no natural inclination to use violence to attract mates.



The art from South Africa is not comparable to the Upper Paleolithic explosion in art and technology. They play in entirely different divisions, and you know it.

You use this tactic repeatedly of comparing things in a black-and-white fashion, and disregarding the fact that what you compare is not black-and-white. You can go to Stormfront yourself and try to convince them that your black-and-white reasoning has any merit. I doubt anybody will buy it.

I think rdos is right. I think he has been right for a long time. The motivation of this "debate" seems to be envy not logic.

At a minimum I've proved that American Indians have higher levels (p < 0.01), that South Asians have lower (p < 0.01) and that African descent have 1/5 the interest rate. Any theory of neurodiversity (defined from the perspective of a Western culture) need to explain those findings. Even if we can argue about the prevalence in Africa, I've at least proved that neurodiversity does not exist at similar prevalence all over the world.



This issue is resolved long ago. Since their participation rate ever since the first survey on this (around 2006-2007) has stayed the same, there is no more data that can be collected with the present method. We need real prevalence studies in Africa, using a randomized sampling.



That's right. I don't accept the 23andme test as a valid test of Neanderthal heritage. This is because it uses Africans as an outgroup (and thus miss all the Neanderthal heritage that has sweept our gene pool), and because it only uses SNPs and not CNVs. In order to create a valid Neanderthal heritage test, we first need the DNA sequence of a modern human before contact with Neanderthal. Additionally, we need the CNV information from the Neanderthal genome.

However, I accept the 23andme test as a possibility to detect if some other test, like Aspie Quiz, correlates to Neanderthal heritage. The 23andme is expected to provide some kind of indication of Neanderthal heritage, and thus should correlate with some other (broad) indication of Neanderthal heritage.



I don't need to associate any trait with Neanderthal DNA. I only need to associate the neurodiversity factor with Neanderthal DNA. I'm not interested in the exact relation between individual neurodiversity traits and Neanderthal DNA, but leave that up to future research.

Last edited by rdos on 12 Feb 2012, 6:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm I reading you right? Are you suggesting because the test is only detecting a 40% to 50% minority of the Neanderthal contribution associated with neurodiversity, and apparently a 50 to 60% Neanderthal contribution to Neurotypical traits, that you are now measuring in your quiz, that the data can't be accurate?

So, if the association provided is that Neanderthal DNA is associated with Neurotypical traits in the Aspie Quiz, that couldn't possibly be true?

Everything you test for in the Aspie quiz is associated with neurodiverse traits, because all the traits are based on slightly different neurology among human beings.

Neurotypicality doesn't exist in real life, someone made the term up to describe folks that weren't diagnosed as autistic. If anything, if one could go back in time, one would expect Neanderthals to exhibit traits associated with extroversion rather than introversion, in possessing the type of traits required to successfully coordinate themselves in a hunting party, where life and death scenarios were a way of life.

You are in a win-win situation to prove that neurodiversity is associated with the 23andme test, if you acknowledge that everything you test for is associated with neurological differences in human beings.

If you are attempting to prove it has anything to do with autism or aspergers, so far from the method you seemed to be confident you could rely on, it appears it is becoming associated with the other end of the neurodiverse spectrum, you have devised, that measures extroverted related traits, farther removed from autism and Aspergers/introverted related traits.

Everyone in the world is neurodiverse, because there is no evidence for typical neurology.

The neurodiversity is expressed in different ways, because of culture and genetic adaptation to environment for survival. It is less likely that an african child with autism would survive as they do in modern society, without the advantages that modern society brings. It is the same with all other health related issues in areas without medical care. The condition becomes evident when diagnosis and care from society is available and provided.

Not even that much. You need to square the correlations to get to how much of the variance is explained. It is more like 15-25%. The other 75-85% is not explained by the 23andme test. We could devise several theories for why this is so, but my theory is that the CNV component is missing in the 23andme, and most of the neurodiversity traits are coded by CNVs. The "proof" for this is that ASDs have a much higher association with CNVs than with SNPs.

Neurotypical traits never enter the picture. Neurotypical and neurodiverse scores are correlated -0.96, which means they are mutually exclusive. IOW, if the correlation with neurodiversity factor is 0.5, the correlation with neurotypical factor is approximately -0.5.



Aspie Quiz has both types of traits. That is an essential feature, and why the spider diagram has an Aspie and neurotypical side. Originally, I didn't group traits like this, but when I started to use semi-automated procedures for grouping, this is what eventually was the result. The symetric social groups was the hardest ones to construct, but it eventually succeeded with the help of some new traits. IOW, the Aspie and neurotypical dimensions first appeared in the PCA results, but later also was possible to duplicate in the sub-grouping process.

That means that neurotypical traits are real, and not some kind of construct. Often, neurotypical traits are expressed as traits lacking in neurodiverse people, but in reality these are traits that evolved in neurotypical humans but not in neurodiverse.

If you look at the group descriptions, you'll note that neurotypical traits are described in terms of adaptations for neurotypicals, while Aspie traits are described in terms of adaptations for Aspies. No trait is described in terms of lack of function, or dysfunction, as this is evolutionary impossible. Dysfunctions cannot evolve and persist.

Your evidence of lower neurodiversity rates in South Asia don't agree with the actual scan of autism in South Korea. The difficulty in assessing the individuals from the US, in ancestry of origin as pointed out per our discussion on North American Indians, and as pointed out by other ancestries by another poster, is that what one choses on your selection of major ancestry of origin, is a subjective guess or bias for many people.

The 23andme test provides ancestry on a genetic basis, perhaps providing some of the most valid results available on ancestry.

You passed over the evidence for why the African culture would be less inclined to take the test. The African American culture is uniquely different than anyother subculture in the US general population. One cannot subjectively assign meaning to why they don't have interest in the Aspie Quiz, without an objective study of the culture, and the type of results from research that I provided.

Unfortunately, even with random sampling in Africa, the Aspie quiz cannot escape western cultural bias, just like IQ tests. One would almost have to design a neurodiversity test specific to each culture in Africa, that could be understood with the differences in nuance of language and meaning specific to each culture. And the person that designed the test would likely need to be a member of the culture to effectively do this.

It would likely present a similiar problem in many other cultures in the world as well, outside of the US and Europe.

What the Aspie Quiz does well, is to give a pretty reliable indication that if one scores very high on the test, that it might be a worthwhile endeavor to go in for a diagnosis, if one feels they want to do this. Your analyses in respect to this value of the test, seem valid to me, from what I have seen reported on this website.

I agree the traits are real, and it doesn't really matter what you choose to call them, there is evidence that variations of neurology are as evident in what you describe as neurotypical as they are on the aspie side.

Autism and ADHD meet the definition of neurological disorder, however the neurological differences in many cases cannot be measured by science, whereas some of the traits associated with what you describe as neurotypical can. I'm just defining the words neurotypical and neurodiverse differently than you are.

There is really no objective evidence to suggest that both types of traits don't exist in indigenous Africans, unless you could come up with an effective test for each culture, and provide the random testing. As you seem to agree is necessary.

South Korea is not located in South Asia. It is located in East Asia.

But there is the problem of where the majority of Asians in the US, that take Aspie Quiz, come from. From information I gathered, it seems like most Asians in the US come from South Asia. OTOH, the indication for Asians in the US, is not that they have less interest (they have slightly above normal interest), but that they score lower.



Possibly, but I use similar categories as US census.



We can dispute if this can explain the 1:5 participation bias, but any way we choose to go about this issue still ends up with African Americans not being exactly like other US groups. Which in itself is proof that race is not "skin deep" only. And I seriously doubt this is a cultural issue, as opposed to a genetical issue. We would not expect many different selections from the US population during a 5 year period to generate the same results if this was a cultural issue only.



I suggested something like this earlier, but not based on culture but based on ancestry. It seems likely that Asians and Africans might need their own neurodiversity tests, with Africans needing a quite different variant. After all, we also have evidence from Africa of a 5% archaic admixture. This should be detectable in Africa with a suitable neurodiversity test, that might be very unlike the European / Neanderthal version. We need another neurodiversity test in Asia because of admixture with Denisovan, and possibly other groups as well. The Asian version would be quite similar to the European version as Neanderthal and Denisovan was not that different.

Then, if we combine these 3 different neurodiversity-tests into a single version, we might be able to detect the 3 principal components of archaic admixture (Neanderthal, Denisovan, African) in people world-wide, and give meaningful ancestral scores to people that are not "skin deep", but real. Of course, most people would get low ancestral scores and high neurotypical scores. We might even be able to detect more components that are currently unknown.

Actually, neurodiversity in Africa being quite different from neurodiversity in Eurasia would explain several findings. It can explain why African Americans have no interest in a neurodiversity test based on Eurasian neurodiversity, as they cannot identify with that. If we presume that the 5% admixture in Africa also is related to introgression from a quite different species, we also would anticipate to find a form of autism in Africa. This is because autism is related to incompabilities in communication and social behaviors, which persist after an introgression event. However, this form of autism would not be correlated with an Eurasian based neurodiversity test to any great degree other than at a superfical level.

I'm not against the idea of neurodiversity in some form existing in Africa. I'm against the idea that neurodiversity in the sense I know it (from a Western culture) exists in Africa.

It took me four trys to get through this thread.

Genetics is not that simple. our family tree had a branch that produced neanderthal and denisovans, who wandered far, into the cold country, and were gone for 600,000 years.

There were other branches that stayed in Africa, but were also a diverged line. Both bred back to another branch, which we only call the main line because it survived, or at least the mixed breeds survived.

Then 50,000 years ago one mix spreads over earth, bringing the tools and traits of the tool makers. The thrown spear spread, but not the later spear thrower, which was more effective. 13,000 years ago the bow and arrow spread, and it was from Africa.

Neanderthal ends in the very warm period before the last ice age, when sea level was seven meters higher in a very warm period, and they cold adapted big game hunters, when the big game died out, most likely from the ticks and fleas of a warmer world.

Neanderthal ends 25,000 years ago, while the archaic African line could have been killed off by the thrown spear 50,000 years ago.

Africa winds up a large isolated but mixed gene pool, neanderthal a small group, made up of at least four non mixing groups, that followed different herds, in small groups, where genetic traits become pronounced quickly.

North Asians are a neanderthal, European, Asian mix. China, Korea, Japan. They are alike, and differ from the Sudah Shelf south Asians, who flowed back and forth as rising and falling sea level connected the large islands to the mainland. Denisovan is found there.

East of Tumba, the volcano that split the world, stright hair, west, India, and in Australia, wavy hair. Sudah Shelf Denisovan Asians, would have a different neurology.

Austrailians seem to be right out of the 50,000 year ago thrown spear Persian Gulf group, then isolated in Australia. They have the traits of the original group, and high IQ was not one of them.

Post 50,000 year Africans have the same, they use boats, throw spears, and flunk IQ tests.

The more genetic mix, the better at IQ tests. A recent find, Coasta Del Sol Spain, seals painted in caves 43,000 years ago, when only neanderthal was around. Painting and flutes seem neanderthal originals.

So the measured types of intelligence likely come from mixing lines. Australia and Africa show lacks. Highly mixed people do well.

The first cloth, comes when neanderthal and sapiens mixed, and neither had cloth before. So not Cultural, but new Genetics.

The Tumba volcano sent a wave back from Asia which reached back into Africa. The existance of the Negrito people of the Melanesions show African traits, hair, far out on what are now the farthest islands, which were the Sudah Shelf.

This migration did not happen in Australia, so Africa got some genes that would not be found in Australia. Africa should do better on IQ tests. If they measure genetic mix. It seems Africa has raised higher cultures than Australians.

In the American experiment, buying Africans, for work and sex, the Legal Standard was, if 1/64 African, Property. The result, African Americans are the only group with growing brains, while their African and European ancestors both have shrinking brains.

They are also developing some medical and neurological problems not seen in the parent groups, due to gene incompatability.

This might take a while to work out. Jewish people have only existed for 4,000 years, and they too have some high intelligence, and genetic problems. Breeding with Europeans in the recent era will likely make things worse.

While everyone out of Africa has the same African mother line, African Americans have thousands. As a genetic experiment, they are most likely to become the future humans. Growing brains and intelligence, and a diversity of lines to cross. They came from a large area of Africa, and mixed with French, Spanish, and all the Europeans. In the four generations since they were property, they have mixed all of that. Lately I have seen some Vietnamese, Chinese African Breeds in New Orleans East.

The Mardi Gras Indians are the slaves of the Choctaw, who when freed were granted Choctaw citizenship, and were half or more Choctaw blood.

If mixing genetics is the way to do it, New Orleans Blacks have been on a shopping spree.

They are well known at the Patent Office, and have produced most of the musical styles in America. They fill the front line of sports teams.

Grandparents with a forth grade education got their children through high school, grandchildren through college, and this generation is in graduate school.

The Choctaw are doing the same, and are the tenth largest employer in Mississippi. The Trail of Tears brought tribes together, they had some white blood, some black, the First Nations are Rising.

If this "theory" is premised on the idea that an indigenous African person is equally likely to take this test as a white person living in the U.S., then that right there is a problem.

In fact, it doesn't even look as though the test can be universally accessed on even the theoretical level. Many people speak languages other than the ones that this quiz is translated into!

I can't take anything with this many methodological flaws seriously, and find it odd that so many here do.

I realize South Korea is not in South Asia, but only a minority of Asian individuals in the US are South Asians.

The Scan of Autism in South Korea is the closest reliable prevalence information for any country in South Asia.

List of South Asian Countries:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_asia#Countries_and_territories_from_extended_definitions



Asian countries of origin for Americans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_Americans



So out of 17.3 million Asians in the US only about 25% are from South Asia. If the majority of your respondents are South Asians, chances are most of the folks that are answering as Asian have East Indian roots.

This is not representative of the US population of Asians. So while you may have extreme interest among East Indians, there is obviously very low interest among the majority of the Asian population. Stigma of mental illness is also a part of the American Asian culture as well, which likely in part explains the low participation among the majority of Asians in the US.

It doesn't appear like the issue of low interest and culture is specific to those of African American Heritage. You live in a relatively homogenous society, so it is possible you may not have a feel through life experience, for the significance that cultural differences make,in human behavior, within one society. Culture plays a huge role in all human behavior. Just a difference in language provides an entirely different world view.

http://healthyminds.org/More-Info-For/Asian-AmericanPacific-Islanders.aspx



I'm glad you seem willing to accept the fact that neurodiversity exists in Africa. As mentioned before every cultural difference impacts the development of the brain through neuroplasticity, so there is no way anyone is going to be able to separate culture from neurology or genetics, in determining behavioral differences among cultures.

And you can be assured that the neurodiversity you know is not the neurodiversity that exists in any other culture. As long as there are differences in language and traditions, there will be differences in the way the brain adapts to the environment through neuroplasticity and the differences in behavior that result.

I think it would be beneficial to let go of the idea that folks of Arabic descent or Indigeneous African descent are of inherent danger to civilization when they migrate into other countries.

If you don't agree with their cultural traditions and religious ideas, that is fine, but when you suggest that it is a genetic issue, that is the worst type of discrimination I can imagine, beyond race, national orgin, religion, or sexual orientation.

The culture of the US has changed so much; it is now many caucasians in the US that want to have the confidence and self esteem evidenced in African American culture, and aspire to become part of that sub culture.

Many minorities in the US have strong cultural traditions, particularly Asian subcultures, whereas the caucasian culture has become a culture of me instead of we. It is part of why caucasians are drifting toward the African American Subculture, they want to feel a part of something other than themselves.

Adversity of all types is what creates genetic and cultural adaptation. Both Americans of African heritage and people of Jewish heritage have had their share through their ancestry, and they have become stronger subcultures as a result of it.

It is likely part of why suicide rates are the lowest among African Americans. They have strong cultural traditions, that provide connections that others don't have.

In my experience working with the military for over 20 years, I have come individuals from almost every country in the world, including indigenous Africans. And I can tell you that the thing that was outstanding in regard to the indigenous Africans was their drive and motivation to survive.

They had an energy that was not present in any other international group that I came across.

We trained Saudia Arabian pilots, in an exchange program, and they were the most polite and mild mannered group of individuals that I came across in my career.

One thing can I can assure you of is obvious differences in neurodiversity, that likely were a part of genetics, environment, and culture that aided in survival in their indigenous areas of origin.

One thing I know of for sure, for myself, is that your prior assumption that these people are a danger to modern civilization, because of any genetic difference, has no merit, whatsoever. It is the value of exposure to the actual people one is studying, when one actually takes the time to get to know them. It can shatter pre-conceived notions.

There is no low participation among Asians. Asians are about 4-5% of the US population, and their number in the US population doing Aspie Quiz is 4-6%. It is their scores that are lower, and this difference is statistically significant.



It is. All minority groups (Asians and Amerindians) have equal or higher participation rates than expected, so that is an issue very specific to African American heritage. And the difference is so large as a factor 5, which reaches statistical significance with a very small sample.

Additionally, this difference is not specific to Aspie Quiz, it also exists in the member statistics of WP, on other autism community sites, and in ASD support groups.



I don't accept neurodiversity as a cultural difference. There are different cultural groups doing Aspie Quiz, for instance Western Europeans, Russians, American Indians and even Australian Aboriginals. The traits measured by Aspie Quiz are not culturally loaded to any great degree. Even if you are a hunter-gatherer you will notice that you cannot communicate well with others, you'll probably know about your "quirks" (at least after them being presented to you). There is a language barrier, but Aspie Quiz today is available in Russian, Polish, Italian, Swedish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, German, Spanish and some other languages. That covers large parts of the world.

I would absolutely not want to research cultural differences. If I knew some items that were culturally loaded, I'll change them to be less loaded to culture. Though I seriously doubt there are any large amount of culturally loaded items. If there are culturally loaded items, they are few, and would not affect scores a lot because most issues are not culturally loaded. Just by selecting out environmentally items I think I also selected out most of the cultural items.

There are differences between the Asian and European sample, but my primary suspicion is that these differences are not cultural, but genetic. This is because most of the Asian sample live in the US, and thus lives in the same culture as other americans, which should mean there should be no difference if there only existed a cultural difference.



The neurodiversity traits are not "adaptations". Most of them are regarded as dysfunctions by psychiatry. Many of the traits in Aspie Quiz are peculiar behaviors that have no advantage whatsoever (most being negative for the individual). These cannot be cultural.



None of these issues are part of Aspie Quiz.

Things like self esteem has an extremely high loading on environment, and so has selfishness vs openess (in fact, the openness factor in Big Five does not correlate much to neurodiversity, and so is not a neurodiversity trait).

You are welcome to provide additional translations. Since Aspie Quiz is a non-funded project, done in my spare time, translations are done by volunteers (they get a list of items to translate). I then create a PHP script and database table for the language in question.



What exactly do you know about the "methodological flaws"? Do you have psychic abilities or something?

Not so. An African American person living in the US. It works for an American Indian person living in the US, so why not for an African American?

You indicated that most of the Asian participants in the Aspie Quiz from the US appear to be from South Asia. South Asians are evidenced as a minority of the US population of Asians at about 25%, so you obviously aren't getting a fair representation of interest from the majority of Asian ancestries in the US. India is a relatively small piece of that pie.

I've already provided evidence that African Americans are less likely to seek diagnoses because of a mistrust of the treatment they receive in the health care system in the US, and that mental health conditions are a stigma within that population.

This is also a studied factor among Asian minorities in the US as well. It may also explain, in part, why you are not getting a fair representation from Asians other than East Indians, in the US.

In the study of Marketing, it is well understood that there are target audiences among subcultural groups, that respond differently to surveys. These are real factors in the real world that impact the frequency of the results on any online survey or test.

Just the term "Aspie", is not a term that will appeal equally to each target audience between subcultural groups. For those in some Asian groups and African American groups that have been culturally referenced throughout their lives with derogatory terms, a term like Aspie might not be a term they find appealing.

Beyond this from a review of the sites that have been linked to the Aspie Quiz, many of the sites consistently used, are not sites that would appeal to an African American Target Audience.

The links that are consistently used, Enclopaedia Dramaticca, Aspies for Freedom, and Wrong Planet, are sites of little appeal to the African American Target audience.

If you want to reach that target audience, you would ensure the test is linked to sites that target the audience you are seeking, such as "Black Planet". That is the most popular internet site for the African American Culture. If you haven't heard about it, it is likely because you haven't looked for it, or have been on a site that advertises it.

This is the same issue for African Americans if they don't frequent sites that include the Aspie Quiz, or if they have a cultural aversion to surveys related to mental health related issues.


The fact that many African Americans are not taking the Aspie Quiz, can easily be explained through a documented mistrust in the diagnosis of health conditions, a review of the lack of African American subculture interest for the websites that the test is linked on, and a shortened "hip" version for the name of a diagnostic condition, that there is little awareness of, in the African American Subculture.

My points on the drift of Caucasian interest to the African American Culture, were not meant to relate directly to the Aspie quiz questions. They relate in general to just how much culture plays a part in human behavior.

A culture that was once ridiculed by Caucasians, has now become a culture of pride. "Aspie" isn't likely going to be seen as a term of interest for either group, because it is not term that is common to that subculture.

Positive and negative adaptations result from pressures during the course of a lifetime that influence human behavior; including some of the traits labeled as "neurodiverse", on the Aspie quiz.

Neuroplasticity can result in positive or negative adaptations, that are not a result of genetics alone.

The score between a perfectly healthy military member and the score of that same military member with serious mental health conditions after combat, would likely score significantly different, as well as any other healthy individual, that succumbs to life pressures.

There is no effective way on the Aspie quiz to determine if the behaviors could be influenced by temporary mental illness, unless those questions are asked.

Depression is the leading cause of disability in the entire world, as reported by the World Health Organization. It can impact many of the traits you list as likely Aspie on the Quiz. Are depressed people that don't list a diagnosis of anykind more likely to take the test? If so, how would you know?

The online Aspie quiz is almost completely limited to the developed world, per limitation of translations. Most individuals in those countries don't have internet access so there is nothing online that you could do to effectively sample the populations.

Since it appears that the crux of your evidence is African American Interest, to attempt to get a proper result from African Americans, the "BlackPlanet" would be a place to put a link, where the subculture might be more likely to find it.

There are barriers to overcome with that subcultural group, to reach that target audience, that don't exist among some others. One cannot expect a valid result when the target audience is not aware that the product exists, or is aware of it's net positive benefit to motivate the effort required to answer 150 questions, on any online survey.

The bottom line is people take the time and effort to answer 150 questions on the Aspie Quiz, because they have a desire to know if they might have Aspergers.

There are cultural differences among African Americans that greatly impact any potential desire to take the test, that aren't as prevalent among some other subcultures.

The barriers might be overcome with an effort to reach the target audience. I think I mentioned it before, but if you have any friends in the marketing field, they might help you come up with a successful approach to reach the target audience.