Autism is as old as our species

[fayanora]

Autism is a mental condition, not a mental disorder. It's a condition that has, according to the latest science, existed for millions of years. It only really started being a problem for people with the condition when the world started getting super crowded, super noisy, and super difficult to live in. I do not believe this to be a coincidence; I believe autistic people born in a calm, quiet, spacious world (like the kind that existed for millions of years before humans started cramming themselves into crowded cities) would not have any issues at all of the kind normally associated with us, like meltdowns (which are caused by sensory overload or being unable to cope with the situation they're in for another reason).

In fact, there's strong evidence that autistic people were vital to human survival, once. A lot of early human life was (and still is for many tribes today) one that involved a lot of sitting around doing boring repetitive tasks, which would make autistic people great at weaving, sewing, making tools such as stone tools, making nets, and the like because we generally tend to be good at doing boring repetitive tasks for a long time without needing to stop. Attention to detail and heightened senses would have been very handy in hunting. Those are just two examples.

This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1349401.html
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