As for Autism being an Evolutionary product, for that to be true, it has to help us survive & reproduce. Has this guy not noticed that Autistic people have trouble making friends let alone getting dates or laid? Sure if Autism translates to highly paid jobs, that might help us attract sexual partners. When you have brilliant ideas & **** communication, you have to be already rich to put your ideas into practice. I'm pretty angry about this drivel.
You should look into the Solitary Forager hypothesis. It's actually a cousin of the ADHD-as-hunter hypothesis. Basically, it states that the traits of Autism did, in fact, lend themselves well to survival and reproduction, by allowing individuals to spend days foraging for food on their own, with little or no contact with their tribe. These types of traits were especially useful in groups where foraging would typically isolate people for long stretches of time.
Combine that with Weston Price's observations on Western nutrition (or rather, lack thereof) causing rather severe physical degeneration, it's really not that far of a stretch that what we know as "high functioning" versions of Autism have been innate traits in a portion of the human population, and the more severe/"low-functioning" versions are a result of physical degeneration, taking what was once an asset and turning it dysfunctional.
(Unfortunately, we don't, and may never have, enough data for this to go beyond hypothesis, which is a shame, in my opinion.)
Perhaps the definition of homo sapiens is in error.
Humans evolved to better themselves as they adapted to outside influences which could possibly spawn a new species which could have offered a new brain on the options list.
They still have older models out there that do not have some of the extras the new ones do.
Considering that there were originally half a dozen or so cousin species to
homo sapiens, many of whom could interbreed, it's not much of a stretch, either, that the reverse kind of happened. We're technically the same as we were when our species appeared, biologically speaking, but it's possible that some genetic lines have DNA that was originally from one of the cousin species, or even from our common pre-human ancestors. After all, not
all ape species are as social as humans, and several species are mother-and-babies, or monogamous nuclear family setups, as opposed to the complex social structures of the Great Apes.
Also it seems unlikely that a very recent evolutionary change would be scattered in people around the globe: One would expect a cluster of specific mutations in a small group in a specific location.
Not necessarily. Mutations depend on environmental pressures. If there are similar environmental pressures even in disparate locations, then different mutations to reach the same ends can still appear. This is especially the case when gene flow is slow, due to a low amount of selection pressure. Selection pressure will often allow one mutation to take majority, but in times of low gene flow, several different mutations can occur and compete, keeping any one of them from reaching what's known as "fixation." These are known as soft selective sweeps.
The ability to make lactase is a prime example of this. It shows up in "clusters," yes, due to environmental pressures -- parts of Africa and north-western Europe were historically herding populations (and therefore consumed dairy), while Asian populations did not consume much (if any) dairy. The interesting part is that the African and north-western Europe mutations are different, and even the Ethiopian mutations differ from the Middle Eastern mutations, despite their relative proximity.
In the case of Autism, odds are good that there are several individual mutations/genes that lead to an Autistic person. As such, when similar pressures are present, different combinations of genes are activated, but produce the same result. And there are a ton of similarities in all of the "civilized" populations that could be contributing.
Unfortunately, though, we're at a point of chicken-and-egg, since it would be far easier to find out global rates of Autism with genetic testing, but to get those genetic markers, we need more thorough knowledge of the patterns that occur. We can't do that without accurate data, and on a global level, the lack of diagnostic capability and (often intentional) misdiagnosis of Autism make it pretty much impossible to track even the incidences of Autism on a global level, let alone study the genetics and epigenetics of it on the same scale.
