Why autism now
Many things are changing. Three forces in particular are propelling children in the direction of maturational delay.
Environmental Variables
The left-handed or maturationally delayed are generally more sensitive to a variety of drugs. Marijuana use lowers male testosterone levels and raises female testosterone levels. Alcohol lowers testosterone levels in men and women. Cocaine use by a mother with a boy in utero can dramatically lower the testosterone levels of males babies slowing down maturational development.
The testosterone levels of overweight males are far lower than other males. With women it is the reverse with overweight women showing higher testosterone levels. And, in a related fashion, thin men tend to have higher testosterone levels than men of average weight.
Smoking has been shown to increase the testosterone levels of men and women, though less predictably in men.
Studies suggest that extremely stressed men, stressed psychologically or physically, experience a drop in testosterone while highly stressed women frequently see their testosterone levels rise.
Men who undergo ongoing disciplined physical exercise will note that their testosterone levels fall. One of the ways that exercise reduces stress is by lowering testosterone levels. With females it is usually the reverse.
Males exposed long term to a low fat diet with exercise experienced a lowering of testosterone levels.
Light has a subtle yet profound effect upon testosterone and other sexual hormones. The pineal gland notes light levels and regulates testosterone levels in response. The levels of light fluctuate according to the time of day and time of year. Several studies have noted that the mothers uterine testosterone levels vary with time of year with the result that children inclined toward exaggerated maturational delay are often born at specific times of the year. Pregnant mothers with autumn allergies with physiologies that are stressed may be bathing their infants with different levels of sexual hormones during that vital week 33 if the 33rd weeks falls in that period.
In addition, older mothers generally have higher testosterone levels than younger mothers. As a women grows older her testosterone levels increase.
Any single one of these variables can influence maturation rates. Combining them often has powerful effects. If both the mother and father are influenced by several of these variables, a not infrequent occurrence, with the mothers testosterone levels going up and the father’s going down, single generation evolutionary change is inevitable.
Contemporary Sexual selection Practices
Two cultural characteristics, female infanticide and several wives for a single husband both behave as functions of sexual selection in a patriarchal culture, reinforcing sexual types. Remember, with fewer women procreating, the male furthest from the cultural ideal fails to have children, his genetics unable to continue. Now imagine a culture whose boundaries have broken down, where infanticide has ended, the selection for specific traits within a culture has ceased and women have the power to pick procreation partners using whatever criteria they choose. This is the world we live in. No one way is being preserved. All ways are open. For the first time culture is undefined and open ended. It is no coincidence that in the United States so much that is new has been and is being created. It is the first place in the world characterized by a complete breakdown of a specific cultural criteria for the ideal man. Women in contemporary western culture are choosing mates based on a new criteria, their own idiosyncratic ideas based on the hodgepodge of cultures that comprise their background combined with the American ideal of independence. This new criteria is now becoming the cultural criteria, as women and culture together, form a new understanding of what they want in a mate. In our modern world, it is not the family or the male that chooses a mate, but the female. Only she decides who the father of her children will be. Women are no longer chosen exclusively for their tendency to cooperate with the ideals of patriarchal culture. The result: more and more higher testosterone women are having babies in modern culture. A wider and wider variety of males are presented with procreation opportunities, particularly the maturationally delayed males formerly often unable to find a mate in patriarchal culture. The return of the ‘nerd’, so to speak.
Moreover, as women have their children later, engaged in the workplace competing with men, they are gestating their infants in a womb bathed with higher testosterone levels engendering increased maturational delay. For example, a 40 year old left-handed women with a husband in architecture or computer engineering, will conceive a boy who is a candidate for robust maturational delay.
Blending of Ethnic Persuasions
The United States is the melting pot. A glorious result of this stew is the blending of formerly unfamiliar genetics into new genetic mixes engendering skills and talents among our children often unattained by a homogeneous people who rarely mix. Usually, these stunning talents are derived from individuals located along the left end of the maturational spectrum. Grace-filled coordination, musical excellence, and intuition for abstract pattern manipulation, and extraordinary dance skills are some of the many gifts associated with the left side. And it is no mistake that many of these people are Americans - mixed ethnic Americans. In America the races blend.
Darwin placed a very heavy emphasis on his theory of Natural selection. Primary supportive arguments were derived from his experience as a breeder of pigeons. He noted a specific repeating event that occurred among pigeons and other species that he observed. The progeny of two members of the same species that had been breeding along divergent lines often exhibited features of their last common genetic forbear. Pigeons with no common ancestors for 2000 years, breeding along separate lines in China and West, had chicks exhibiting the wing coloration and patterns of roc pigeons, characteristics that had not appeared in either line for hundreds of years.
As barriers keep falling that prevent peoples from different ethnic background from marrying, the children of those marriages often exhibit features of the parents’ last common ancestor. The diaspora from Africa has been estimated to have begun to occur around 50,000 years ago. Marriages of two individuals from ethnic backgrounds last in contact by a portion of that length of time will frequently have children requiring the stimulation and diet common in a matriarchal social structure from that far back in time. These are children blessed with the potential to make the modern world a far richer place to live, but they require special nurturing and a special diet.
