The program that Jacqui manages guides autistic children into more interactive relationships by blending performance with a sensitivity to the nuances of emotion.  An audio interview is located here, an article here, with CAPE documentation of her process located here and here.

The documentation describes a step-by-step process that guides children with deep difficulties intuiting the experience of others into a place where they can estimate another person’s emotion and respond in an appropriate way.

What has me thinking is the possibility of approaching autism with a blending of performance, rhythm and education around emotion, something that this program has been doing to a large degree for more than ten years.

If autistic children can be encouraged to dance to rhythms, dancing to the same beat in a group, experiencing the mirroring of each other’s experience in a performance context, then perhaps bridges can be built between beings with difficulty entering others’ worlds.

Mark Stairwalt, my colleague producing Shift Journal, reminded me of the power of mirrored experience…

“My wife and I have a family friend who once worked as an untrained volunteer with autistic kids, and she astounded the professional staff by achieving a communications breakthrough with one particularly hard-to-reach child.  When I asked how she had done it, she told me she had simply mirrored the body language, breathing pattern, facial expression, etc., of the child in question.  Empathy expressed via mimicry > instant breakthrough.”

This is the principle of biofeedback, mirroring or establishing rapport taught by the practitioners of Neuro-linguistic Programming, much of it derived from the work of Milton Erickson, the hypnotherapist.  It has been discovered that very effective therapists and hypnotherapists engage in mirroring to establish contact with a client’s unconscious.  The same principle applies when communicating with a person with autism.  Reflecting an autistic person’s experience by mirroring his or her biological rhythms, breathing, heartbeat and movements gives the autistic person purchase on the reflector’s experience.  They see you, in no small part, because you, at that moment, are reflecting them.

Engaging in the performance of rhythmic activities, activities that perhaps, as in the Jacqui Russell programs, offer information on how emotions work, also engages the experience of feeling mirrored that is integral to establishing rapport.  A group of people performing the same movements at the same time, dancing, are mirroring one another’s experience.

The autistic have trouble establishing rapport.  The foundation feature of establishing rapport is mirroring another person’s experience.  It is important that the mirrorer genuinely have the feelings that he or she is mirroring, or at least have access to those feelings.  Two people having the same feelings while at least one of the two people is mirroring the other’s experience is what makes a sharing authentic.

The performance of two or more people of a rhythm-based experience such as dance places that group into the same physical experience, one that reproduces and generates the dynamics of rapport.

Performance, rhythm, dance and mirroring are perhaps a combination that can leverage an autistic person into an experience that includes another person.  Principles of how an unconscious is accessed are combined with an understanding that how we may have evolved may be directly related to the performance of dance and rhythm.  If autism is an evolutionary condition featuring characteristics of our species’ ontogeny from a few thousand generations ago, then perhaps an intervention that features both a reproduction of an autistic indigenous environment, dance and rhythm, with a proven doorway to the unconscious, mirroring, can be the opportunity for an autistic person to behave in new and different ways.

Superb programs exist now, such as Jacqui Russell’s work in Chicago schools.  Let’s use the principles above to expand those programs.  To guide the autistic to have more facile access to their imaginations, it is necessary that we use ours.

In the West, we have been seeking to integrate these two seemingly incompatible beliefs:  evolution has no goal and society is evolving toward something specific that is good.  It would not be the first time that humans believed two opposite things to be true if it seemed there was a benefit in doing so.

What if both things could be true?  What if understanding how both contingency and progress could both be true had to do with understanding the evolution of compassion?

It has to do with understanding that biology and society are the same and that compassion is at least partially a result of changes in maturation rates and timing.

The heterochronists of the late eighteenth and early twentieth century were evolutionary biologists that explored changes in the rate and timing of maturation and development.  Stephen J. Gould tracked those theorists that focused on neoteny, or features of infants and embryos that over time appeared in the adults of descendants.  Gould, Montagu and others hypothesized humans evolved to a societal and then cultural species in no small part due to the selection of neotenous features in our species.  No theorists emphasized sexual selection as the selective process largely responsible for the neotenic trend.  There are indications that this is the case.

If humans were selecting humans because they looked and behaved like very young children, then perhaps those humans doing the selecting were being in turn selected themselves because they were attracted to the very young.  At one end, there were those that were selected because they looked and behaved like children.  At the other end, there were those selected because they were attracted to those that looked and behaved like children.

This might be called a feedback loop.  The evolutionary theorist R. A. Fisher called it runaway sexual selection.  Geoffrey Miller in The Mating Mind goes into detail regarding how these runaway effects occur.  Might it be possible that with the emergence of culture, this dynamic could inspire a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin positive Omega Point trajectory?  This would be where many of us are fully engaged in feeling attracted, not unlike the exercise of compassion, while the rest of us are consumed with exhibiting the playfulness and creativity of children?  What might result when what we experience is an integration of the two?

Random chance and deliberate intention can appear to be the same, depending on the scale of the observation.  We may be in the middle of a nonrandom pattern of compassion evolution created in a seemingly random way.

Let’s take this one step further.

Consider that biology cannot be random because creation is an exercise of deliberate intent.

With each creation, with each appearance of an individual in an egg or womb, we have an emergence of awareness.  Awareness is nonrandom if we use a playful definition.  Consider that awareness is the exercise of deliberate intent.

With neoteny, features characteristic of earliest ontogeny wiggle their way forward into older and older stages of descendants.  What is being carried forward into an adult human is an ontogenetic experience that features proximity to creation.  Our obsession with features of the young, and those attracted to features of the young, is engendering that which is the youngest, which is creation, in our adults.

By recognizing, embracing and integrating our conception we experience compassion and identification with all that is.

As individuals inside society inside biology, we arrive home through identification with creation to something we might call reality.

Reality being everything is aware.

With time I let the title drop. It seemed cultish and, in our culture, suggestive of something sinister. Visitors were sometimes confused. Confusion was not the effect I was looking for. Nevertheless, serpentfd.org is still a functional domain name of the original site, now going by the URL sexualselection.org.

Ten years later, I’ve brought in a research assistant, Rosanna Schatzki, to help me gather information and help write papers that will appear in this blog from time to time. Roger Olson continues his excellent editing as he has over the last year, having edited almost 400 pages of these essays.

Of the many conditions and diseases that lend themselves to interpretation by this thesis, I’m thinking of starting with breast cancer in males and females, prostate cancer and testicular cancer. There are a number of problems in evaluating the influence of hormone levels on these diseases. We’re hypothesizing several environmental conditions that can influence the results. I’ve noted in earlier essays how this may have compromised Norman Geschwin’s work. Geschwin and Galaburda’s Cerebral Lateralization has influenced much of what happens in this thesis. Still, this seems a reasonable place to begin since our hypothetical four social structures and associated hormonal constellations clearly suggest where specific kinds of cancers will congregate.

We make the following predictions. Unable to perform experiments or studies, we research the literature for support and contradictions to our positions. (T=high testosterone, t=low testosterone, E=high estrogen, e=low estrogen)

High female breast cancer is Classic Matrifocal Female TE/Male te.
High male breast cancer is Contemporary Matrifocal Female Te/Male tE
High prostate and testicular cancer Warrior Patrifocal Female tE/Male Te (and populations influenced by the pineal testosterone effect (see Introduction to the Theory of Waves).

We would not expect to see high levels of any of these cancers in Conventional Patrifocal Female te/Male TE or those Asian societies where sexual hormone levels are shifted downward to lower levels. (See Tentative Conclusion to the Estrogen Discussion)

There should be accompanying effects in related areas. Those with higher percentages of left-handedness, anomalous dominance and larger corpus callosums will likely exhibit higher percentages of breast cancer. There will likely be a close association with autism, Asperger’s, OCD, female borderline personality disorder and male narcissistic personality disorder.

We’d expect societies exhibiting high percentages of left-handedness to fit into Classic or Contemporary Matrifocal. These might be Nigerian Yoruba, Kwakiutl and others. We’ll look for evidence of elevated breast cancer in those societies.

I’ve hypothesized the influence of the change in light on migrating equatorial populations creating autism. This same effect will likely propel higher incidences of breast, prostate and testicular cancer as individuals in those populations are pushed to both hormonal extremes. Pretty much all the diseases and conditions we’re exploring should show elevated levels among this population. I’m also starting to wonder if these same effects might be influencing nonmigrant northern populations, having even possibly encouraged the Scandinavian paradigm with only the matrifocal prototypes preserved for their advantages in preserving vitamin A and D.

In the earlier piece, Latino Repercussions, I noted seven variables that skew the patterns that we seek clear evidence of. Variables that can influence what we are exploring include not only migration patterns and latitude issues (regarding light), but seasonal effects that include the possible influence of autumn allergies on a mother’s uterine hormonal levels, father effects revolving around how a father’s environment may influence his hormone levels, social structure changes in transitional times, social structure changes over the last few hundred years, cross-ethnicity pairings, multigenerational echo effects and the standard basket of environmental influences that influence hormone levels. Conducting this research is a little like playing basketball in a hailstorm on a slippery hillside.

This will take patience.

Information coming out today that I haven’t seen before include articles mentioning higher rates of autism in other countries among immigrants. The Huffington Post noted, “Higher than normal autism rates among children of immigrants have also been reported in Ireland, the UK and several cities in North America, especially Montreal.”

One article notes a Swedish study concluding autism is higher among Somali immigrants in Sweden.

I see no articles that mention my posted pieces on the subject, or the work of Norman Geschwind that inspired my hypothesis.

In other pieces, I’ve discussed the hypothesis, first considered by Geschwind and Galaburda, that light mediated by the pineal gland could be influencing testosterone levels, thus engendering conditions characterized by maturational delay. They did not make the connection to heterochronic theory, but it seems fairly reasonable to mate migration with left-handedness. Yet, if Kwakiutl evidence maturational delay having lived in or near the Arctic Circle for thousands of years, then the effects of light on the pineal may show signs of creating maturational-delayed populations at the extreme Northern and Southern ends across the earth, without recent migration.

Are there signs of increased left-handedness in Southern Australia, Southern Africa and the Southern tip of South America? What about the Lapplanders? Consider Latino and African-American populations in Alaska.

Alcohol lowers testosterone levels in males. Fat increases testosterone and estrogen levels in females, lowers testosterone levels in males. Tobacco influences hormone levels. Cross referencing season of birth and parent alcohol, tobacco and fat consumption may offer insights into the origin of conditions characterized by maturational delay. Perhaps a confluence of several variables propels individuals into left-handedness with no left-handedness recorded in their family.

It is possible that in the lands characterized by little light for long periods of time, which often leads to depression, increases in alcohol consumption to medicate depression leads to ontological changes in the children. There are few studies that would suggest that a male can modify his genetics by the way he lives his life. Perhaps such evidence exists and could be examined by setting up predictions based on converging influences changing a male’s testosterone levels and impacting his children’s maturation rates.

Another group to examine for these effects is those that do not see the light of day. Maybe these people work nights, have very sensitive skin or spend almost all their time underground. What might be the handedness distributions and disease/condition constellations of their children? Cross referenced with the other hormone influencing variables, data about these people might reveal patterns.

The Kwakiutl are a unique culture in other ways than higher percentages of left-handedness. They are matrilineal. Perhaps we should be looking for signs of egalitarian societies in those places in the world where it is coldest.

In previous pieces, I’ve noted these effects on Jewish and American Black populations, with a skewing of populations toward the extremes of maturational delay and acceleration evidenced by a number of diseases and disorders characterized by these hormonal extremes. I would predict that both these populations would evidence higher percentages of autism and left-handedness, perhaps higher in places like Milwaukee and Minnesota than Houston and Miami. In just the way the Somalis in Minneapolis and St. Paul are exhibiting higher rates of autism, I would suggest that this Somali population would exhibit higher rates of left-handedness.

Another population influenced by these processes are the Latino immigrants from South and Central America. Studies could be conducted tracing the effects of sunlight on the pineal by noting the country of origins of Latino individuals, their proximity to the equator and how far north those individuals have traveled.

There are several issues.

First, how often do these people return to their country of origin? The more frequent their returns and the longer their stays, the less influenced they will be by the testosterone pineal effect.

Second, conceiving and bearing their children in Seattle vs. San Diego will likely influence the mother’s testosterone levels in different ways. I would predict that Seattle Latinos have higher incidence of left-handedness, autism and other symptoms related to these issues, such as allergies.

Third, there may be father effects. Recent age-of-father studies suggest older males are more likely to sire autistic children. This may be related to a father’s testosterone levels dropping with age. If the father’s testosterone levels at the time of sperm creation influence the testosterone levels and maturation rates of his children, then where the children are conceived (how far north or south) may influence the children’s maturational disposition.

Fourth, not all indigenous South and Central American populations share the same social structure tendencies. Egalitarian communities such as Mayan peoples with matrifocal tendencies exhibit male maturational delay and female maturational acceleration unlike some South American tribes with the opposite disposition. Individuals from matrifocal communities are more vulnerable to testosterone pineal effects than their patrifocal counterparts.

Fifth, if an indigenous American or Latino woman or man mates with a Black, Asian or White, the progeny may reveal features or characteristics of the last common ancestor, a not uncommon effect. This, in combination with testosterone pineal influences, may in combination further thrust children toward male maturational delay, female maturational acceleration and autism.

Sixth, it is possible that there will be multigenerational echo effects. Second-generation Latinos marrying and then conceiving children at the same time of the year as they themselves were conceived may further boost the influence of seasonal testosterone-pineal effects. Whereas the first generation may not have exhibited effects of extreme maturational delay or acceleration, a second or later generation may show those influences, particularly if other environmental testosterone-influencing variables are in play, for example, if the mother smokes.

Seventh, there are many environmental effects influencing testosterone levels in males and females. A Latino mom eating an American high-fat diet, unfamiliar to her before her migration, can dramatically increase testosterone and estrogen levels, influencing her children’s uterine environment.

In the way that we observe Blacks and Jews impacted by changes in geography, we are likely to see the same variables influencing Latino populations. The fact that there is often frequent travel back to the country of origin will mitigate the testosterone-pineal effect. Other influences noted above may exaggerate them. Just as there have been dramatic increases in allergies for Blacks and Jews, watch for such symptoms appearing in Latinos. Other maladies influenced by testosterone levels are also in play, such as prostate cancer. Autism is not the only condition influenced by testosterone levels.

These are the effects that we can observe by tracing the paths of immigrants in the Americas. What of South-to-North immigrant routines in other parts of the world? We’d hypothesize immigrants from India to the U. K. To manifest these effects, there are populations of southern peoples in Scandinavia. What have those communities been experiencing?

A similar effect is seen in Asia. Society has strongly encouraged that the left hand not be used. The rates of left-handedness in many parts of Asia are 2% and lower. It’s difficult to determine the true handedness percentages.

The same effect comes into play with autism. Though it seems there have been dramatic rises in autism over the last twenty years, many believe we just have more refined evaluation protocols with more attention being placed upon those individuals exhibiting unconventional behaviors.

The thesis presented in this work makes several predictions regarding handedness and autism, two issues that I believe go hand in hand.

It has been noted that there have been increases in autism in Silicone Valley. I would also look for higher percentages of left-handedness among that population. This population of highly skilled, abstract thinkers engaged in innovation suggests the presence of left-spectrum, low-testosterone male, high-testosterone female prototypes of matrifocal society. This would be an enclave of the future.

Among the Somali of Minnesota, where autism is increasing, I’d also estimate increased percentages of left-handers. Where light influences a mother’s testosterone levels though pineal gland misinterpretation of the seasons (the pineal gland still thinking light is following equatorial, daily 30% fluctuations, maintaining ongoing high or low thresholds for several months instead of several hours), more left-handed children will emerge. Also, more strongly right-handed children will be produced as the center of the balanced polymorphism (the seamless gradations from strong left-handers to strong right-handers) disappears. This will result in increased prostate cancer (high-testosterone males) in this population after the children become adults. Many additional maladies characterized by hormonal markers will also be higher in this population.

I have hypothesized that in Scandinavia, the population exhibits neotenous characteristics in both sexes as a result of prolonging ontogeny to allow adults to derive vitamins from dairy in combination with lightening the skin to absorb vitamin D. When both sexes exhibit neoteny, we are hypothesizing that the males have relatively high estrogen resulting in a determined male-aesthetic focus, where they choose females with features of the very young. We see in Scandinavia, unlike in neotenous, patrifocal Asia, a powerful matrifocal tendency exhibited by a society focused on partnership societal values. I predict higher percentages of left-handers in Scandinavia.

In matrifocal West Africa, one would expect to discover higher percentages of left-handers, and this is the case. One would also predict this to be the case in Polynesia based upon egalitarian social structures. There are indigenous American populations with egalitarian societies. Is there increased left-handedness in those populations or has there been too much sharing of genetics between contiguous matrilineal and patrilineal societies?

Consider that the direction that Scandinavia has gone is a trajectory being followed by other Western industrialized societies. Let me suggest that this is happening on several levels. The 1990s Swedish intervention to temporarily nationalize banks in exchange for equity is the action that the UK engaged in early this past October, followed by the other EU nations, followed by the U.S. This reversed a U. S. direction taken two weeks before. Scandinavian nations exhibit an intuition for the healing power of the commons. These intuitions emerge from the biological imperatives of neotenous neurologies. The values of egalitarian, partnership society have their roots in high-testosterone women mating with low-testosterone, high-estrogen men.

Watch for increases in left-handedness in American, white, urban populations mirroring the pathway taken by the Scandinavians. Observe high-testosterone, low-estrogen women pairing off with low-testosterone, high-estrogen men. These would be slimmer peoples, like the Scandinavians, but not necessarily blond and blue eyed. These changes take more than a single generation.

Observe Jewish and Black Americans experiencing the same effects as the Somalis in Minnesota but not so extreme, revealing increased numbers of left-handedness as these two formerly nearly equatorial populations continue to experience hormonal polarization to the extremes of society’s balanced polymorphism. Again watch for the emergence of the Scandinavian hormonal prototype with slim couples, commanding women, cooperative men. Classic matrifocal pairings will also be in evidence, high-testosterone, high-estrogen women marrying low-testosterone, low-estrogen men. These women will often be lefties, but will be large, not tall.

Studies exploring these issues have not been consistent. With left-handedness only recently being relieved of sinister implications and autism evaluation procedures still not universal across the world, we’ve a ways to go before we’re comparing apples to apples. Still, these predictions are based on evolutionary biological principles manifesting in society today.

F te/M TE Conventional Patrifocal
F tE/M Te Warrior Patrifocal
F Te/M tE Contemporary Matrifocal
F TE/M te Classic Matrifocal

F te/M TE means low-testosterone & estrogen females, high-testosterone & estrogen male. Domineering, caring, discriminating men choosing cooperative women.

F tE/M Te means low-testosterone, high-estrogen female, high-testosterone, low-estrogen male. Domineering men choosing cooperative, caring, discriminating women.

F Te/M tE means high-testosterone, low-estrogen female, low-testosterone, high-estrogen male. Commanding women choosing creative, cooperative, caring, discriminating men.

F TE/M te means high-testosterone & estrogen female, low-testosterone & estrogen male. Commanding, caring, discriminating women choosing creative, cooperative, aloof men.

We now have two complementing dynamics acting as the engine behind social change and evolution.

Mother’s testosterone levels > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

Mother’s estrogen levels > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > evolutionary trajectory.

I hypothesize two feedback loops. Mother’s testosterone level > progeny maturation rate > social structure proclivity > mother’s testosterone level. Mother’s estrogen level > progeny ability to exercise aesthetic discrimination and caring behavior > social structure proclivity > Mother’s estrogen level. The environment can intervene at all three levels of both loops by either influencing maturation rates and timing (via testosterone) or by influencing the intensity of mate selection criteria (via estrogen), thus modifying the trajectory of social and human evolution.

We have here a kind of Silly Putty model of human social and biological transformation. There are numerous impact points that can result in change, many forces that can mold humans. I’ve been calling this the Theory of Waves, noting the impact of neoteny and acceleration on human biological and social evolution. That was when I was observing only the effects of testosterone. The name still holds, except now we are hypothetically observing the effects of estrogen coursing through this system, compelling the waxing and waning of sexual selection, focus on aesthetics and caregiving, and perhaps the aesthetic architecture supporting culture.

In an earlier piece (Minnesota Somali Autism: Geography and Light), I hypothesized that because diurnal light cycles affect the pineal gland (see Geschwind and Galaburda, 1987), equatorial peoples that migrate to northern climates would experience an increase in autism. This change would occur because the pineal gland would interpret long winters and summers as an equatorial night or day, and thus it would act differently when regulating very high or low thresholds of testosterone in the mother’s womb.

Supporting this conjecture are studies that suggest the conclusion that both Black and Jewish populations, transplanted from their African or near-Africa origins, reveal both extreme maturational delay and acceleration in their male populations. These effects would result from seasonal variations in testosterone in their mother’s wombs. Indeed, studies reveal seasonal effects in the conditions that accompany extreme maturational delay and acceleration and diseases such as prostate cancer that are accompanied by unusually high testosterone levels.

There is also the possibility of multigenerational reverberation effects. Second-generation women with exaggerated hormonal levels with accompanying maturational delay or acceleration manifesting in very high or low testosterone levels in the womb may experience their womb conditions amplified if, at the sixth week before birth, the season is again one characterized by either extreme dark or light, thus mirroring their own birth conditions.

Another potential impact is the possibility that males pass on to their progeny their body’s maturation rate proclivity based upon their mother’s uterine environment. This information would be picked up during their lifetime, early in ontogeny. It’s also possible to hypothesize that the testosterone-influencing light environment during sperm creation impacts the maturation rate of his children. If either of these conjectures holds true, then the issues to be explored by evolutionary developmental biologists examining the steering mechanism of the engine of social and human evolution become exponentially more flexible.

Unexamined are the potential effects of the dynamics we are discussing on a population of humans leaving Africa between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. Testosterone and hypothetically estrogen both come into play. The emergence of signs of culture in Europe may be directly related to the same effects observed to occur on populations of Blacks and Jews noted above, with a proliferation of unique hormonal types branching out from an equatorial hormonal constellation convention.

I would hypothesize Classic Matrifocal (F TE/M te) populations moving from Africa into Europe. As malleable as human populations evidently are, we might conclude that any of the four prototypes wandered out or that single populations morphed from one type to another over time. It’s possible that different populations occasionally intermixed. Regardless, a tendency toward abstract speech communication, evidenced by males with a new split brain and a smaller corpus callosum, impacted by the changes of light and modified womb testosterone levels, could have been propelled far deeper and faster in the direction of language proficiency when becoming accelerated in maturation.

Mirroring these changes in males leading to spoken language and an ability to manipulate time (see earlier essays noting my hypothesis that females had already evolved these abilities), females may also have been influenced by their environment, perhaps by increases in fats and nutrients, which result in higher testosterone and estrogen levels. Enhanced estrogen may have made them far more discriminating in the males that they chose for mates. (Venus figurines may be portraying the high-testosterone, high-estrogen, overweight woman.) Split-brain males may have been becoming far more adept at producing cultural artifacts, taking advantage of their newfound ability to speak articulately and control time, with the most adept males being chosen as mates.

The sudden emergence of culture may have been influenced by changes in light that affect testosterone levels that guide maturation rates. Estrogen levels may have also been influenced by the new environment, which was compelling a more refined female aesthetic. They would have been culling out those males who were affected positively by the changes in light.

These are deeply hypothetical conjectures, but they give you an idea of how to play with the Rubik’s Cube, Silly Putty platform of ideas that comes when you notice how malleable we are. The effect becomes all the more noticeable when we appreciate how testosterone (maturation rate) and estrogen (caregiving and sexual selection proclivity) influence transformation.

“A corollary of our hypothesis is that hormonal effects on the brains of offspring may vary with the time of conception. The activity of the pineal gland changes seasonally with alterations in day length. As a general rule, during the dark winter months the pineal becomes active and suppresses both ovaries and testes, whereas in the summer it is inactive and sex hormone levels are higher. For this reason many animals bear young in the spring, an advantageous situation since temperature and food supplies are more suitable for survival. An example of such seasonal modulation of hormonal effects on the brain is observed in the HVc nucleus of the singing bird (Nottebohm 1981). This description of pineal physiology is, however, somewhat oversimplified. An animal’s sensitivity to light may vary through the year. Gonadal hormones may thus become activated in the spring, but as a result of loss of sensitivity to light over the summer hormone levels may diminish as fall approaches. Despite these facts, day length is a powerful influence. Thus, steers increase their weight more rapidly in the winter when artificial light is supplied to lengthen the day. This light-enhanced growth of muscle mass does not take place if the bull is castrated, suggesting that the effect of light is mediated through a rise in testosterone effect (Tucker and Ringer 1982)…..If pineal effects on sex hormone levels are important, then the birth months of lefthanders, and of those with learning disorders, might not be uniform throughout the year, since fetuses conceived at different seasons might be subjected to very different hormonal environments. These effects should differ in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and at the equator, although other factors, such as variations in the ethnic composition of populations, would also have to be considered. Data are still very sparse. Badian (1983) found that in males born in each of the six months beginning in September, the rate of nonrighthandedness was higher than that found in any of the other six months, but no clear trend was observed for female births.” (Geschwind & Galaburda 1987: 116-7, Cerebral Lateralization)

Noting the observations of Geschwind and Galaburda in 1987, I am struck by how many of their insights apply to the possible origins of autism. Consider the emergence of autism among Somali Minnesotans. (Click here to note the autism-inducing implications of equatorial populations migrating to extreme Northern climates, taking into consideration Geschwin and Galaburda’s hypothesis.)

Many of the studies inspired by their work did not take into consideration the difference between familial left-handers and those who became left-handed as a result of trauma. Results of those studies were usually inconclusive. I sometimes wonder how often it is that cerebral palsy and autism have identical etiologies, only different parts of the brain were traumatized. Researchers conducting studies involving left-handedness who do not remove those individuals that have been traumatized study two different etiologies, muddying results.

It seems to me that administering Marian Annett’s dexterity/speed peg tests would efficiently separate those untraumatized genetic lefties from those that had experienced early, hostile environments. (Natural lefties often evidence facility with both hands.)

“The earliest civilizations of the world–in China, Tibet, Egypt, the Near East, and Europe–were, in all probability, matristic” Goddess civilizations. “Since agriculture was developed by women, the Neolithic period created optimum conditions for the survival of matrilineal, endogamous systems inherited from Paleolithic times. During the early agricultural period women reached the apex of their influence in farming, arts and crafts, and social functions. The metrical with collectivist principles continued. There is no evidence in all Old Europe of a patriarchal chieftainate of the Indo-European type. There are no male royal tombs and no residences in magarons on hill forts. The burial rites and settlement patterns reflect a matrilineal structure, whereas the distribution of wealth in graves speaks for an economic egalitarianism.” (Gimbutas, Marija (1991) The Civilization of the Goddess. Harper: S. F. P. 432)

There are two major currents contemporary theorists are not noticing, forces influencing the direction that society evolves and its individuals adjust to. Handedness is not arbitrary. Those that are random-handed (commonly called left-handed) are the old matristic or matrifocal neurological types common perhaps 100,000 years ago, and they were still exerting influence in terms of social structure as recently as early recorded history. Second, when Geschwin and Galaburda note the influence of features of the environment, such as light, on handedness, they are observing one of the ways that an individual’s neurology and resulting social structure is modified. Sexual selection proclivities also have enormous influence on these maturational trajectories, revealing left-handers as matrifocal in origin. Visit here and here for more on sexual selection and conditions featuring maturational delay.

Understanding social structure and the relationships between matrifocal and patrifocal frames as they drive human evolution provides insight on the origin of conditions characterized by maturational delay. Understanding the neuropsychological origins of these conditions and the many related psychological and oncological disorders offers awareness of how the nature of societal transformation integrates into the neuropsychological, psychological and physiological profile of the individual.

Much comes down to how and whom we pick as partners. And then, how we live our life. Perhaps the poets should be writing about evolution. Perhaps they are.

This scheme is part of a larger picture of how humans evolve. Changing maturation rates over generations send societies in one of two directions: matrifocal or patrifocal social structures. Low testosterone males mating with high testosterone females form the foundation of matrifocal social structure. High testosterone males pairing with low testosterone females make up patrifocal social structure. When mothers today exhibit matrifocal features, high testosterone, while exposed to environmental influences that elevate their testosterone further, male children with delay tendencies may shift into extreme delay.

This theory predicts that females with autism will not exhibit maturational delay, but maturational acceleration accompanied by elevated testosterone. When a mother’s testosterone level elevates, she not only influences the maturation rates of her children, she sends them on a journey into the past. Maturation rates unfold on two scales, on the scale of the individual unfolding in a lifetime–personal ontogeny–and on the scale of how our species has evolved over the last few thousand generations. We have recently (25,000 years ago to the last couple hundred years) evolved out of matrifocal social structure to patrifocal social structure. We reverse the process by reversing our maturation rates, reproducing that path we took to arrive in the present. Elevating mother’s testosterone, we instill ancient ontogenetic pathways, propelling our children back in time to when language was still new. For males, backwards is lowered testosterone and maturational delay. For females, backwards is raised testosterone and maturational acceleration.

Light influences testosterone levels via the pineal gland, which regulates testosterone production. Testosterone fluctuations of 30% a day can be observed as thresholds follow diurnal–day & night–cycles, influenced by the availability of sunlight. What happens when a people are shifted away from consistent, daily 30% fluctuations into northern climates where the light in winter is almost nonexistent, in summer almost always there?

Jews and Blacks both display anomalous distributions of testosterone in males. Both Black and Jewish males (studies were conducted with only males) showed either very high or very low testosterone levels. Both these cultures were transplanted from equatorial regions to climates with light-fluctuating seasons.

One would predict that both these ethnicities would exhibit a higher percentage of conditions characterized by maturational delay, such as autism.

Somalis immigrating to Minnesota are discovering radical rates of autism among their children. This theory predicts that these autistic children’s birthdays should cluster in certain times of the year. If mother’s light-influenced testosterone rates are particularly high at six weeks before birth, intervention to lower rates (for example, modifying light exposure) would be prudent.

There is also the possibility that the father’s testosterone levels influence the child’s rates of maturation. There are no studies to support this possibility other than studies concluding that older parents are more likely to give birth to autistic children. (Women experience high testosterone with age, males lower testosterone.) It could be estimated at what seasons a fathers testosterone rates are lowest at conception, and compare that to when mother’s testosterone is highest six weeks before birth and look for the impacts of overlap. It may be that both mother and father are having an effect.

There are also possibilities that autumn September through October allergy seasons are influencing testosterone levels impacting embryo’s maturation rates.

Light and testosterone are related. Many things in our environment influence testosterone levels. Understanding autism involves recognizing how testosterone is influenced and realizing how this influence connects to how we evolved.