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When you think of someone with autism, what do you see? It might be someone with a special set of talents or unique skills – such as a natural artistic ability or remarkable memory. It could be someone with enhanced abilities in engineering or mathematics, or an increased focus on detail. This is because despite the negative stories of an "epidemic of autism", most of us recognise that people with autism spectrum conditions bring a whole range of valued skills and talents – both technical and social – to the workplace and beyond.

The origins of autism

Research has shown that some key autism genes are part of a shared ape heritage, which predates the “split” that led us along a “human” path. Other autism genes are more recent in evolutionary terms, although they are still more than 100,000 years old.


Research has also shown autism, for the most part, is highly hereditary. Although a third of the cases of autism can be put down to the random appearance of “genetic mistakes” or spontaneously occurring mutations, high rates of autism are found in certain families.

This suggests autism is with us for a reason, and as our recent book and journal paper show, ancestors with autism played an important role in their social groups through human evolution because of their unique skills and talents.

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Ancient genes

Going back thousands of years, people who displayed autistic traits would not only have been accepted by their societies, they would have been highly respected. Many people with autism have exceptional memory skills, heightened visual perception, taste and smell and in some contexts, an enhanced understanding of natural systems such as animal behaviour. The incorporation of some of these skills into a community would have played a vital role in the development of specialists and it is very likely these specialists would have become vitally important for the survival of the group.

Autistic traits in art

Further evidence can be found in traits shared between some cave art and talented autistic artists – such as those paintings found in the Chauvet Cave, in southern France. This contains some of the best preserved figurative cave paintings in the world.


The paintings show exceptional realism, remarkable memory skills, strong attention to detail, along with a focus on parts rather than wholes. These autistic traits can also be found in talented artists who don’t have autism but they are much more common in talented autistic artists.

Rewriting history

Unfortunately, despite the potential evidence, archaeology and narratives about human origins have been slow to catch up.

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Diversity has never been a part of our reconstructions of human origins. It has taken researchers a long time to move beyond the image of a man evolving from an ape-like form that we so typically associate with evolution. It is only relatively recently that women have been recognised as playing a key role in our evolutionary past – before this, evolution narratives tended to focus on the role of men.

It is, therefore, no wonder that including autism – something which is still seen as a “disorder” by some – is considered to be controversial and this is undoubtedly why arguments about the inclusion of autism and the way it must have influenced such art have been ridiculed.

Given what we know, it is clearly time for a reappraisal of what autism has brought to human origins. Michael Fitzgerald, the first professor of child and adolescent psychiatry in Ireland to specialise in autism spectrum disorder, boldly claimed in an interview in 2006: "All human evolution was driven by slightly autistic Asperger’s and autistic people. The human race would still be sitting around in caves chattering to each other if it were not for them."

While I wouldn’t go that far, I have to agree that without that “dash of autism” in our human communities, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today.


Penny Spikins is a senior lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins at the University of York.

Read more about autism and evolution at The Conversation.

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