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Though people with autism face many challenges because of their condition, they may have been capable hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times, according to a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology in May.
The autism spectrum may represent not disease, but an ancient way of life for a minority of ancestral humans, said Jared Reser, a brain science researcher and doctoral candidate in the USC Psychology Department.
Some of the genes that contribute to autism may have been selected and maintained because they created beneficial behaviors in a solitary environment, amounting to an autism advantage, Reser said.
The "autism advantage," a relatively new perspective, contends that sometimes autism has compensating benefits, including increased abilities for spatial intelligence, concentration and memory. Although individuals with autism have trouble with social cognition, their other cognitive abilities are sometimes largely intact.
The paper looks at how autism's strengths may have played a role in evolution. Individuals on the autism spectrum would have had the mental tools to be self-sufficient foragers in environments marked by diminished social contact, Reser said.
The penchant for obsessive, repetitive activities would have been focused by hunger and thirst towards the learning and refinement of hunting and gathering skills.
Today autistic children are fed by their parents so hunger does not guide their interests and activities. Because they can obtain food free of effort, their interests are redirected toward nonsocial activities, such as stacking blocks, flipping light switches or collecting bottle tops, Reser said.
"Control oil, and you control nations. Control food, and you control the people" - Henry Kissinger.In 2008, Canadian conservatives introduced a wildly unpopular Bill C-51 - the Food and Drugs Act - legislation regulating foods, therapeutic products and cosmetics. Enraged vendors of herbs, supplements, and other natural remedies fought back hard. Conservatives didn't proceed with the Bill, but instead introduced C-36, the Consumer Product Safety Act, in 2010. C-36 is essentially a revised version of C-51 with the supplements marked as exempt.
Comment: It seems this article glosses over the fact that there's been an exponential increase in autism over the last several decades, which is more likely due to toxicity overload than some genetic malfunction. The evolutionary argument is sketchy as well. Sometimes evolutionary processes can explain things very well, like diet and food tolerances for instance, but fail miserably when applied elsewhere.