I received an email from Elaine Morgan, popularizer of the aquatic ape theory of human evolution and the author of several books on human evolution, including The Descent of Woman.  Morgan recommended that I read the work of Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.  She suggested I read Mother and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding.

“The paradigm shift away from thinking of our Pleistocene ancestors as reared by all-nurturing chimpanzee-like mothers, and toward thinking of them as apes with species-typical shared care, has been slow in coming.  Only in the past decade has cooperative breeding’s implications for attachment theory begun to be addressed, and its evolutionary implications taken into account.”  (Hrdy, Mothers and Others, p. 113.)

Hrdy discusses the influence of the alloparent in detail, describing the profound uniqueness of the human species, where mothers share infant intimacy with other females (and occasionally males) from the first day on.  This is unheard of in other great ape species.  Many things are implied.  Hrdy concentrates on how natural selection reinforces a cooperation theory-of-mind paradigm that allows a larger number of progeny to survive in communities where child-rearing is a community event.  For Hrdy, coming from a natural selection theorizing background, natural selection alone explains how humans evolved an ability to identify with another person as compassion became a highly useful feature.

Two things jump out at me.  First, sexual selection seems to be of relatively little importance in Hrdy’s hypothesis.  Neoteny is not mentioned.  With a default assumption that natural selection is how things transform, there is no awareness that many of the features that Hrdy describes reveal neotenous trends.  Though she discusses the influence of matriarchy, this is not integrated into an understanding of how matriarchy encourages specific kinds of evolution, particularly those kinds of evolution leading to the features that Hrdy is paying the closest attention to.  Matrifocal social structure encourages cooperative societies.  Instead of exploring the conditions that support matrifocal social structure, Hrdy commits the usual sociobiological sin of assuming that only natural selection is in play.  (Geoffrey Miller’s work would be the exception.)

Placing a heavy emphasis on alloparent intervention keeping our species alive, Hrdy neglects to make the connection between neoteny and social structures that support alloparents.  In other words, Hrdy’s work supports matrifocal human evolution.

No doubt this is just the beginning of my exploration of Hrdy’s work in connection with my Orchestral Theory of Evolution.  Thank you, Elaine, for sending me in Hrdy’s direction.

Second, considering that autism features individuals exhibiting the characteristics of our evolutionary forebears, and noting that the environment and child-rearing practices of those forebears might be what current autistics are craving, I’ve hypothesized that diet, rhythm, dance, touch and performance may all be necessary to those with autism.  Reading Hrdy’s book, it strikes me that perhaps an autistic neurology requires constant multiple parents, several persons to form attachments with.  For a child to feel part of society, perhaps it is neurologically necessary that several central females be engaged from birth.  Hrdy notes that in primitive societies, though the babies may travel among several persons over the course of a day, the baby sleeps with the mother at night.  It is also possible that an autistic individual requires close contact with a central figure through the night.

As it becomes clearer how exactly we evolved, we may evolve a deeper understanding for how we can adjust the environment of particular humans having difficulty adjusting to current society.

Understanding autism is at the heart of this orchestral theory of evolution.  If this theory does explain how autism emerges and offers interventions that can improve the lives of those that feel inhibited by the condition, then there is the chance that several dozen conditions and diseases may be addressed by using the principles outlined in this work.  My premise is that autism is a condition that features male maturational delay and, in females, acceleration.  Social structure, neurological anomalies and endocrinological differences are all integral to autism and Asperger’s etiology.   By adjusting our theory of evolution to take into consideration how exactly maturation rates and timing are influenced by social structure and the environment, the causes of autism and the causes of a number of other conditions and diseases are possibly made clear.

Autism does not have just one cause.  Perhaps there are several different etiologies and autism will acquire several different names when the different causes are uncovered.  The particular evolutionary dynamic I describe in this work describes exactly how one kind of autism emerges, under what circumstances and in which kinds of families.  I focus on three specific causes of autism that are directly connected to an underlying evolutionary matrix, a collection of processes that influence physical and mental health in a number of areas.  Though I concentrate on autism, this work represents a new theory of medical etiology, removing natural selection from its present station as all that doctors know.  In its place, I offer a number of tools that have the potential to make medical diagnosis an evolutionary intervention.  Consider that if we understand that how we treat our bodies and what we are exposed to compel the evolutionary trajectory of progeny, with repercussions for both ourselves and our children, then understanding health becomes the same as how we choose to evolve.

There are three main variables that impact autism.  This blog discusses contemporary changes in social structure, environmental influences and the blending of two parents with no recent common forebears.

Social structure is huge.  Contemporary theorists have been blind to the effects of an emerging matrifocal society.  They are so focused on what seems the default convention, patrifocal social structure.  The mind blindness described by Baron-Cohen that offers a window to understanding autism serves as a societal metaphor when it comes to understanding that patrifocal social structure is but one of two primary social structure paradigms.  Blind to the emergence of the power of women in contemporary society, we don’t notice the repercussions of that change.  The delay of maturation in males is one such repercussion.  I describe specifically how this happens.

There are at least eight variables that influence levels of testosterone and estrogen, often changing those levels differently, if not in opposite fashions, in men and women.  Changing uterine testosterone levels impacts maturation rates, delaying or accelerating the lifelong maturation rates of progeny.  Adjusting estrogen levels has the potential to impact the timing of maturation processes, resulting in dramatically different neurological structure.  This work explores how changes in environmental variables influence autism, Asperger’s and other conditions.

Darwin noted that mated variants of the roc pigeon, bred separately in China and Europe over 2,000 years, created chicks that revealed features of their 2,000-year-old roc pigeon progenitor.  Modern breeders combine variants that are not closely related in order to create “hybrid vigor,” bringing forward some of the strength of ancestors.  If humans acquired facility with spoken language at about the same time we departed Africa, then mating ethnic persuasions that have had almost no contact over many thousands of years may produce children revealing features of their last common ancestor.  This may result in gifted progeny like Barack Obama.  It may also lead to children with difficulty speaking or who are unable to achieve split consciousness without the kind of guidance and stimuli that their ancestors received.

I am proposing that autism is a social condition that is impacted by the environment.  By understanding autism, not only can we grasp how humans evolved, but we can form a deeper understanding around what it is to be human.  If an understanding of consciousness is integral to understanding evolution, and if this orchestral theory of evolution satisfactorily defines the variables that have impact, then autism is a good place to begin as we seek a way to make this theory useful.

I expect that if this new theory I am presenting here is embraced by enough interested individuals, it will evolve to something different as the criteria that a theory be useful propels practitioners in new directions.  It is important that a theory be fun.  If it’s fun, then we have our unconscious invested and aboard.  With the unconscious as guide, the theory will change.  Consciousness is all about creation.

Bernard Crespi has written a paper, Psychosis and Autism as Diametrical Disorders of the Social Brain, which focuses on several neurological features as influential in the etiology of particular diseases and conditions.  Corpus callosum size (the corpus callosum is the primary brain bridge between the two cerebral hemispheres) and anomalous dominance (differing cerebral hemisphere sizes) are two of those features, aspects of cerebral lateralization.  I would consider that corpus callosum size not only influences the ease and speed of information transfer, but that corpus callosum size influences the experience of self awareness or split consciousness.

There are correlations between degrees of cerebral lateralization, how much the two cerebral hemispheres vary, and conditions characterized by maturational delay (autism, Asperger’s, stuttering).  Degrees of handedness are influenced by this variable.  Other diseases and conditions are associated with right cerebral hemispheres not pruned by early childhood testosterone surges, leaving a larger overall brain with two hemispheres the same size.  Ally these features with changes in corpus callosum sizes (and corpus callosums can vary in size in several ways depending on which of several zones are varying), and I would suggest you have a template for estimating degrees of self awareness (split consciousness), behavior, specific diseases, various conditions and personality structure.

My point in this piece is that in the context of two cerebral hemispheres with varying sizes, corpus callosum sizes are influential in the speed of information transfer, and information transfer between the cerebral hemispheres is integral to our experience of self awareness.  The more inhibited information transfer, the more self aware we become.  I mean self aware in the context of split consciousness or a person struggling with himself or herself.  There is a spectrum featuring at one side a non-self-aware, primary-process person with an experience characterized by not being able to be two places at once, two times at once, nor being able to imagine something’s opposite.  This is animal consciousness, the kind of consciousness we experience while dreaming.  This is the consciousness of small children.  This is the consciousness of the autistic.

At the other side of the spectrum are those humans with an experience characterized by a split.  These individuals are two people.  The unconscious feels like a different person.  The world often seems very black and white.  Imagination is often exercised as different times and places, and things’ opposites are juggled and compared, and conclusions are drawn.

The split, modern consciousness is encouraged by a small corpus callosum size with an inhibition of hemispheric communication, along with a right cerebral hemisphere reduced in size.  Light moves at 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of information transfer between cerebral hemispheres varies depending on the structure of the bridge.  The smaller the bridge, the more inclined that individual is to experience himself or herself as split, self aware, surrounded by a community of ideas.  That is my hypothesis.

Whereas the speed with which information passes between the hemispheres influences the emergence of a separate self, there is a second level of information transfer that deeply influences physiology, personality and behavior.  This is the passing of information between generations.  That this seems slow may be a result of our focusing on an individual as the primary unit in evolution.  Assuming that evolution unfolds as part of a process characterized by environmental influences on those that are genetically predisposed to modify ontogeny in response to those environmental influences, then we might consider that examining evolution from any specific level of experience, including the individual, makes little sense.

In just the way that information passes back and forth between the cerebral hemispheres, informing the whole person, a person whose experience may be characterized by a split, information passes back and forth between individuals within the larger community, influencing individual ontogeny, compelling different physical features and behaviors.

In other words, though it looks like the unit of change in evolution is a generation, that generation adjustment may come as a result of an almost infinite number of pieces of information transferring throughout the larger community, a community not unlike a massive brain with countless hemispheres.

The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.  The speed of nature information transfer might be measurable, but we don’t know even a fraction of all those variables that influence ontogeny.  One question to consider is this:  If in a human a split brain can lead to the emergence of self awareness, even if that awareness is characterized by no small amount of anguish, confusion and isolation, then might this multiple-brain, massive-information transfer characterized by nature suggest self awareness?  And, consider that humans are part of that production.

We always knew that sex governed our lives.  There is now the possibility that we can understand how exactly this is done.

In both sexes, entering puberty is characterized by a surge in testosterone that, among other things, halts most synaptic growth.  If fat levels are not high enough, puberty is delayed.  Certain levels of estrogen are required for testosterone surges to occur.

Over ten years ago I hypothesized that a mother’s uterine testosterone levels would influence the likelihood of her child exhibiting autism.  I estimated that the rate of maturation would be determined by the amount of testosterone.  A mother with high testosterone would feature maturationally delayed sons and maturationally accelerated daughters, both vulnerable to autism.

This last season I’ve been applying the pattern of how estrogen controls the timing of testosterone surges at puberty to early childhood when testosterone surges prune the right hemispheres of most normal right-handed individuals.  Might estrogen levels in these infants, toddlers and children be determining the timing of these testosterone surges?  What if estrogen levels were so low in boys that testosterone surges did not occur?  The result would be an unpruned right hemisphere, a larger brain with two cerebral lobes that are the same size.  This is a common feature of autism.

If a mother has both high testosterone and high estrogen, what I estimate to be an archetype of one of two forms of matrifocal social structure, then, according to the principles that I’ve been playing with, she would birth a low-testosterone, low-estrogen son; high-testosterone, high-estrogen daughter.

The implication is that we might predict that autism would be relatively common in cases where the rate of maturation and the timing of maturation combine to engender brains, mostly male brains, which are maturing slowly with little variation is hemispheric size.

Regarding female infants and children with high estrogen encouraging pruning still drifting in an autistic direction, click here.  That is a little more complicated.

Right now, I’m wondering if breast milk vs. infant formula might be an influence on this process.  If a mother’s body is able to modify her embryo’s maturation rate and timing based upon the various environmental influences that impact testosterone and estrogen levels, then does a mother’s milk also adjust to environmental influences in ways that her child’s ontogenetic timing is modified?

Does what a new mother eats, for instance, a high-fat diet, influence her breast milk to increase the estrogen levels in her sons and daughters?  Could a high-fat diet increase the chance of an autistic child?

High-fat diets increase testosterone and estrogen levels.

How much influence does what we eat have upon our children?

Heterochronic theory, the study of the effects of rate and timing on maturation and development, takes the work of several late nineteenth century and early twentieth century theorists and packages that work into a sort of seamless whole. Stephen J. Gould in his Ontogeny and Phylogeny went far, codifying the various theorists’ predilections so that they made an overriding sense. I say “sort of” seamless whole because the actual endocrinological underpinnings of the dynamics were never explored.

Neoteny is the best known of the six heterochronic processes. Neoteny is the process whereby features of infants, embryos or the very young are, over the course of generations, prolonged to emerge in the adults of descendants. Acceleration is the opposite, whereby features of adult ancestors appear in the infants of descendants. For example, let’s say great great grandfather had a baritone voice, emerging at puberty. His son’s deeper voice may emerge just before puberty and his great grandson might have an unusually hoarse voice as a child. That would be an acceleration of a feature. These things normally take hundreds and thousands of generations, though they can be encouraged to occur in less than half a dozen. Wolves and foxes have been neotenized in a mere 20 years, acquiring dog-like characteristics.

Endocrinology is a new science even though we have been observing the effects of the gonadal hormones since the dawn of self awareness. That there might be an elegant correlation between specific hormones and the rate and timing of maturation has not been explored outside work done by biologists, followers of Matusa mostly, on amphibians and other nonmammal species. For over ten years, I’ve been exploring the repercussions of a theory of human evolution that considers that testosterone regulates the speed of maturation. This is a profoundly epigenetic theory, a theory that estimates that testosterone regulation occurs as a direct result of environmental factors that determine testosterone levels. Epigenetic theories are those theories that explore heredity/environment interactions that result in ontogenetic and eventually evolutionary change. It was unorthodox until recently to consider that genes are programmed to take into consideration environmental effects, and that the result of modifications will not only appear in the individual but in the individual’s descendants. So, we might see why it’s taken us a while to get to a place where testosterone could be even considered as a major force in evolution.

Chris Knight in his Blood Relations outlines the profound effect that social frames of reference have upon our ability to theorize. Thomas Kuhn alludes to the impact that shared social views have upon theorists’ frame of reference. Knight describes how hobbled we are in the West by a nonfeminist perspective. Kuhn suggests a sea change of societal perspectives would be necessary for the following to make sense.

Heterochronic theory’s changing rate and timing can be elegantly assigned to the effects of testosterone changing rates and estrogen controlling timing. Both hormones are associated with a host of related hormones, and there are circumstances where male and female hormones may transition to the other but, speaking generally, there are patterns that suggest that at a very real level, individual ontogeny, social evolution and human biological evolution are unfolding according to this very specific, two-variable dance.

Our commitment to Darwin’s theory of natural selection has made it difficult to note the effects of the environment upon evolution.

Our devotion to the idea that the behaviors of males in evolution are more important than the behaviors of females has made it almost impossible to observe that behind the scenes it has been the female controlling the timing of the process.

I wish we had a better word than “heterochronic” to describe the patterns. It would have been better if we had a name like “orchestral evolution.” Then it would make more sense when we assigned the position of conductor to a woman, she that decides the timing of the production.

There are several places where estrogen may be quietly stepping in and deciding exactly how things unfold by regulating the timing of those events. That may be occurring in no small way due to estrogen controlling the timing of testosterone’s effects.

• Fat levels at puberty, influencing estrogen levels, determine the timing of pubertal testosterone surges in both sexes. Individuals may experience delayed puberty if there is not enough fat on their bodies to propel the process.

• Estrogen levels in an infant and toddler may be influencing testosterone surges that determine cerebral synapse pruning. We don’t know what determines the timing of testosterone surges that result in the diminution of the right cerebral hemisphere. If it is a similar process to what determines the timing of testosterone surges in puberty, then estrogen levels may not only be controlling cerebral lateralization but may be heavily influencing language production, conditions such as autism and numerous other human features and conditions.

• Estrogen levels in a mother’s womb may be deciding (along with testosterone) which social structure the child will be inclined to ally with. I’ve described four social structures, two matrifocal and two patrifocal. Estrogen levels are a key determinant of social structure proclivity.

• Estrogen levels may be determining both the intensity of mate selection criteria (higher levels compelling a more determined choice) and the degree of focus on the young. Estrogen not only decides which male features get passed to the next generation but determines the likelihood of progeny survival by how much attention is directed toward the young. Consider that in female infanticide it is almost always the mother that kills the infant.

• Estrogen may offer the placating option when combat is being considered. Estrogen can control whether a battle occurs or not.

Darwin’s theory of sexual selection or female choice may be but the suggestion of a vast network of relationships determined by estrogen levels. Darwin was familiar with the work of contemporaries, Neo-Lamarckians, who focused on the orthogenetic tendency of features to evolve in particular trajectories. We can see those patterns now as part of the larger pattern of Gould’s heterochronic theory paradigm. It is possible that Darwin’s theory of natural selection and his theory of sexual selection can be allied in a heterochronic theory of evolution that places testosterone as the prime mover of rates of maturation and estrogen as the queen of timing. Interestingly enough, Darwin’s third theory, pangenesis, revealed orthogenetic insights. Darwin even hypothesized “gemmules,” or particles, that would flow through the bloodstream, carrying information regarding the environment to the places in one’s body that controlled evolutionary change.

In other words, Darwin had all the puzzle pieces. But, he was exploring these ideas in a time when society embraced only the idea that might is right, environment be damned and women control little of what occurs.

To seriously consider that testosterone may control the rate of evolution, estrogen the timing, we might have to go back 150 years. The answer to our origins may be in the origins of evolutionary theory.

It just struck me that there may be a biological basis to the evident fact that creoles across the world exhibit similar features.  If the societies that are being intermingled are from across the world, as is often the case, with people mating with no lineage in common for over a thousand generations, then the same dynamic in play that creates hybrid vigor may be bringing into contemporary times features of their last common forebear.

This would suggest that creole peoples would exhibit other features characteristic of their ancestors, not just ancient language structures.  If the merging peoples were separated by perhaps 2,000 generations, we might expect to observe an increase in conditions characterized by maturational delay, such as autism, stuttering, Asperger’s and left-handedness.  We might also see a talent for dance, gesture and performance.  (See “Introduction to the Theory of Waves” for details on this hypothesis.)  In some creoles, only the languages blend.  In others, there is a blending of ethnicities as peoples half a planet away meet and form families.  When genetics separated by many generations blend, according to Darwin, common ancestor characteristics emerge.

Might creole societies display features that we would associate with primary process (one time, one place, no negatives)?  In other words, might there be a cognitive withdrawal to an earlier societal evolutionary time?

There are other variables in play.  In the piece Aboriginal Primary Process and Contemporary Autism, I noted the possible effects of specific child rearing practices that could encourage children not to maturationally delay but to stay engaged.  Specific tribal child rearing conventions may have been necessary to create the shared identity characteristic of ancient tribal culture.  If those conventions were not used, it may have not been a question of the child acquiring individuality, but of the child withdrawing to a place of nonidentity, not unlike autism.

So, there are not two new themes I am exploring in this thread.  Creoles may evidence the biological principle observed by Darwin whereby divergent lineages when combined display features of the last common ancestor.  Regarding creoles, such a feature may be the language grammar and structure.

Second, the hypothetical aspects of primary process displayed by some aboriginal societies may be evidencing an alternative identity formation, one that requires specific child rearing practices to encourage participation by young minds.  I might suggest that particularly ancient aboriginal societies, matrifocal cultures, for example, might display earlier stages of biological/neurological/hormonal evolution.  If those particular child rearing practices are not engaged, then the repercussions might be withdrawal or a form of autism.  The new thing to consider is that some aboriginal societies may be exhibiting group identity, which is far from the cult of individuality that characterizes the contemporary United States.  I’ve never explored this, though I have a vague memory of studies exploring the differences in personal identity between aboriginal and modern individuals.

In the back of my mind is the question of whether contemporary autistic children are hard wired for the kind of group identity characteristic of the biological/neurological/hormonal constellation of ancient aboriginal societies and whether they need the specific child rearing practice necessary for that biological/neurological/hormonal type?

This piece started by positing that creole language structure peculiarities might signify evidence of a biological process.  This led to the conjecture that group identity characteristic of some aboriginal societies might be connected to primary process, which suggests connections to autism.  In some ways, it seems to come down to identity.

Autism has been described as a condition characterized by a lack of theory of mind.  Perhaps another way to view the condition is that children with autism are displaying difficulties acquiring identity.  Different societies offer different ways to display identity.  Maybe we need to examine whether modern society should explore alternative group identity options as it relates to children with a nonconventional neurology.

They ran comparisons to 98 African Americans. “…71% of their DNA from ancestors who came from all over western Africa, 8% from other parts of Africa, and 13% from Europeans.”

A premise of my work is that there are several causes of autism that are related to changes in a mother’s sexual hormone levels as this relates to changes in testosterone and estrogen levels over the course of our recent (3,000 generations) evolution. We’ve transformed from a matrifocal, aboriginal, high-testosterone/high-estrogen female, low-testosterone/low-estrogen male to the reverse, a high-testosterone/high-estrogen male, low-testosterone/low-estrogen female. Various environmental and social effects propel our children backward hundreds, sometimes thousands, of generations. When sent too far back, their world becomes again one characterized by primary process (one time, one place, no negatives) that in modern times manifests as autism because there are no longer the ancient aboriginal social conventions that serve to bind individuals together within a group. This might be constant rhythm, constant touch, low-fat diets, nonstop dance, gestural language.

In Darwin’s 1859 On The Origin of Species, he described the result of mating two lineages of pigeons separated by 2,000 years of separate breeding. In Europe and China the birds were bred for different traits, and the two populations showed few of the features they displayed when last aligned. When the birds were mated by Darwin’s contemporaries, Darwin observed a proliferation of features in the hybrids that looked like the 2,000-year-old progenitor, the roc pigeon. There had been a slip backward of hundreds of generations to an ancestor last held in common by the parents.

Breeders of horses, dogs and other domestic species find that with careful interbreeding of disparate lineages, hybrid vigor can be encouraged by the carrying forward of useful characteristics of common ancestors into the present day.

Consider the following. Humans mating with other humans separated by two thousand generations or more since last connected are encouraging the emergence of features in their children that were extremely useful back when spoken language was brand new, or perhaps still mostly gesture. I would estimate that the children of these marriages would be left-handed a far higher percentage of the time, right-handedness hypothetically emerging with spoken language and hemispheric differentiation.

Some individuals would have difficulty adjusting to contemporary child rearing practices, tending to withdraw and to be lost in primary process. Hybrids may not easily integrate into a domestic context. Other individuals offer an astonishing array of useful features that seem to seamlessly align themselves with us moderns. There are those that are a combination of the two.

We are more than our genetics. What our parents provided is but part of the package. Also there is what we learned while in the womb, epigenetic understandings. Then there are the decisions we made while growing older. Genetics, environment and personal decisions combine to make us what we are and what we become. Nevertheless, how our parents’ contributions combine have a powerful effect upon what comes after.

Barack Obama is a hybrid child, a left-hander, a charmer and a deft performer. How much of Obama’s skill set comes from characteristics vital to our ancient forebears? In a matrifocal society, these are features that are deeply respected and particularly useful in procreation. Why are some children provided a set of skills that fit perfectly for our times while others have so much difficulty adjusting?

I don’t know. But it does seem reasonable to me that we explore the conditions that might feel most familiar to those emerging among us now and revealing features characteristic of long ago. A place to begin looking is where our matrifocal, aboriginal peoples are still alive today. Some of those people are still speaking in click languages, on the continent where we were born.

Perhaps the oldest peoples of the world can offer us insight into contemporary conditions and diseases that we are wrestling to understand.

Finding powerful ways of explaining what I’ve found becomes as important as what I’ve discovered in these forests.  Sometimes the metaphor itself feels as significant as the process the metaphor seeks to represent.

Alford Korzybski famously noted, “A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”  From my Zen evolutionary perspective, the territory is constantly in flux, representing an infinite number of constantly shifting relationships.  My art seeks to be part of a process that creates theories that can usefully represent these constantly changing relationships, and then I want to devise metaphors to make the theories feel accessible.

The proofs part is a challenge.

So, while I develop a repertoire of metaphors, proofs elude me.

I use the Internet as a metaphor for biology, society and evolution.  I use water, waves, rivers and oceans to suggest evolutionary processes.  Music, dance and symphonies evoke interconnected transformation dynamics.  Toys, games and play evoke an understanding of processes in evolution.  I use experiences in my own life to suggest the structure of evolutionary theory.

At the same time, I search for patterns so tight, so obvious, so elegant and indisputable that the observation would qualify as a proof.  For example, if most matrifocal aboriginal tribes had the same blood type as most autistics, then a connection between the two could be surmised.  This is not the case.  You get the idea.

So, noting that the map is not the territory, I spend time blindfolded as I am looking for connections while seeking ways to represent what I have found.  I realize I am really operating on two dissociative levels, never really having experienced the “territory.”  For an artist, the trick is to somehow invest the metaphor with enough of the nature of that which is being represented that the feeling of the source material is transmitted.  Tasting truth is nourishing beyond description.  Somehow description is required to provide that taste.

So I imagine patterns, develop “as if” frames, form hypotheses and play.

I imagined that because we had larger brains 4,000 generations ago, about when culture showed evidence of emerging, and that we quite possibly had larger brains before we started using speech to communicate (we were instead dedicated to gesture, dance and song), then maybe there are larger-brained people around today that have difficulty speaking and/or are deeply committed to music.  I discovered that the autistic often have very large brains, musicians often have larger brains, and that the autistic are obsessed with pattern replication.

I had not developed a proof but an evocative hypothesis.  Though I predicted and found that the autistic have larger brains, this does not prove anything.  I predict that there would be a reduction in autism if children of high-testosterone, left-handed-family mothers were raised with features of society characteristic of our experience 4,000 generations ago.  Diets should be low in gluten and low in casein, and there should be nonstop music with lots of rhythm, increased gestural communication featuring touch, more physical activity and tons of dance.

Because a mother with one autistic child has a one in five chance of having another (as opposed to 1 in 150), then this might be the group of women to try this out.  Convincing people to follow such a protocol seems unlikely.

So, I sniff, feel and listen for connections that call out to be recognized.  Only, when I describe the connections, I find I’m making art, not science.

Beauty feels deeply present and familiar.  Usefulness lingers just beyond my reach.

I write about 90 days before posts appear.  In a couple weeks [a couple months ago], posts start to emerge that begin with the observation of a possible erroneous connection, that both Hopi and Trobriand Islanders have languages with not much more than the present tense and both are matrifocal.  Two cases a pattern does not make.  That the Hopi are mostly present tense is contested.  The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language informs culture with language structure guiding culture values) is considered disproved by many, but I’m thinking there might be a connection between language, ancient matrifocal society, primary process and autism.

A premise in that long piece, “Introduction to the Theory of Waves,” is that matrifocal societies will evidence diseases and conditions associated with autism in modern society.  I’m starting to think that premise may be wrong.  The particular way that children are being raised in matrifocal aboriginal society may be guiding those with predilections toward autism toward a more societal-connected version of themselves.

The connecting paradigm is primary process, a concept developed by Freud and embraced by Gregory Bateson.  It outlines thinking in one tense (the present), one time (now) with no negatives.  Dreams take place in primary process, as does early childhood, as do, hypothetically, animals, for instance, chimps.

What struck me while reading Whorf discussing the Hopi and Malinowsky discussing the Trobriand Islanders was that both peoples had a language that suggested intimacy with primary process with little attention to detail outside the here and now.  This fit my paradigm of matrifocal society preceding contemporary consciousness, matrifocal society being present when we bridged from gesture to speech.  What this suggests for me is that the particular way that children in these matrifocal societies are being raised may harbor specific techniques that modern families could use to bridge the autistic child into social reality.

I would focus on diet (the classic “paleolithic diet” with no gluten or casein), constant rhythm, almost constant dance, maybe more UV light and perhaps more touch.  What might be the common child-rearing practices among matrifocal cultures with primary process-like language structures heavily emphasizing the here and now?  For those women with high-testosterone uterine environments, maybe these techniques could be an opportunity to raise their children in an environment natural to their neurologies.

I’ve been playing with these concepts in the columns for a couple months.  They are leading to other interesting conjectures regarding females and estrogen in estrogen’s biological, prehuman manifestations.  Animal endocrine systems are way beyond me.  Still, it feels to me like autism is the bridge concept to understanding who we are as humans, and finally understanding ourselves and our place in the biological universe.

Thank you for the nice things you said, and the criticism.  The criticism I deeply value when detailed enough that I can adjust.  Don’t feel afraid to blast me.

Thank you, Amber.

Andrew

First, if estrogen is a trigger in teenaged girls for entering puberty, thus beginning the testosterone surges that freeze brain growth, and it is also true for males (a stretch) that estrogen levels trigger pubertal timing, might this also apply to male and female infant/toddler testosterone-surge synapse pruning that results in asymmetric cerebral lateralization?  If so, might infant/toddler estrogen levels be instrumental in causing autism, low estrogen resulting in delayed growth?

Second, noting the seeming connection between estrogen’s focus on the young and the exhibition of maternal behavior along with estrogen’s focus on very specific features in a mate (thus driving the emergence of unique male species traits), is it true that species that engage in female sexual selection are also species where the mother exhibits maternal behavior?  An implication is that K vs. r strategies might compel female choice and changes in the exhibition of male behaviors.

Third, might it be the case that estrogen, predating testosterone, is somehow responsible for early proliferation of life on earth insofar as estrogen is associated with creation, discrimination and focus on the young?

In the old religions, there is a view of life characterized by the triple symbol of virgin, mother and crone.  There are goddesses that are both creator and destroyer.  If we approach estrogen as contributing to the three hypothetical frames noted above, the female acquires a depth and power that is mythical in scope.

Estrogen nurtures the young.  Estrogen focuses on particular features in mates and then encourages the proliferation of those features over generations.  Whereas it seems like testosterone is deeply involved in the creative process, perhaps testosterone’s lack of discrimination places in the hands of the female the direction that evolution travels.

Whereas testosterone assigns the power, energy or speed with which evolution unfolds, estrogen governs creativity and direction.

The first two of the three premises noted above are testable hypotheses.  If it is discovered that species that engage in female choice also display maternal behavior, I’m not sure how useful that information is, except that it supports the dynamic I’m proposing regarding human social evolution.  It doesn’t prove anything.  If, indeed, estrogen is a trigger for pubertal timing in males and females, then estrogen may be the trigger for early childhood testosterone surges, which are integral to the timing of maturation changes.

If males that are naturally maturational delayed experience a further delay in the timing of testosterone surges, then Asperger’s or autism might result.

It just struck me that whereas low estrogen in girls approaching puberty delays pubertal onset, in males it might be reversed.  High estrogen in males might delay pubertal onset.

And there is the fact that I am an amateur.  I’m associating fat levels with estrogen levels.  The two may not be as closely related as I am assuming.

There are a lot of situations where male or female estrogen or testosterone levels go in opposite directions with the same environmental effects.  What if baby males need low estrogen to time testosterone surges and baby females need high estrogen to time those surges?

High-fat diets would result in males with increased likelihood of autism.