Archaeologist Penny Spikins of the University of York's Department of Archaeology has conducted extensive research showing that the key genes associated with autism are entirely absent from the genomes of both Neanderthals and Denisovans—our nearest evolutionary relatives. There is, however, a leap, a step in human evolution that researchers have yet to explain fully. Spikins's theory suggests that during the Stone Age, certain behavioral differences may have been vehicles for innovation and creativity.
High levels of focus, limited empathy, a tendency to concentrate exclusively on analysis and theorizing, the ability to study and grasp complex and technical subjects, and a methodical, persevering approach—these are hallmarks of high-functioning autism and Asperger's syndrome. Meanwhile, creative thinking appears frequently in bipolar spectrum disorders and in conditions that produce hallucinations.
According to Spikins's compelling study, The Stone Age Origins of Autism, certain deeply systematic individuals who could apply themselves with intense focus to their tasks would have been indispensable to the development of human society from its earliest days.
Although high-functioning autism was first diagnosed in the early 19th century by doctors Kanner and Asperger, scholars and psychiatrists have since used historical records and written testimony to identify autism spectrum traits in deceased figures. The names that emerge from these historical-psychiatric investigations are weighty ones—people whose discoveries, inventions, and creations fundamentally shaped our world. Asperger's syndrome has been recognized in the character traits of Michelangelo, Newton, Mozart, Darwin, Van Gogh, Ford, Einstein, Hitchcock, and Steve Jobs.
There is a striking resemblance between ancient cave paintings and drawings made today by autistic individuals.
There is a striking resemblance between ancient cave paintings and drawings made today by autistic individuals.
I picture a boy sitting in the corner of a cold, dark cave thousands of years ago, playing with stones. By striking them together, he accidentally creates a sharp edge. He cuts himself. Someone in his tribe grasps the potential of these revolutionary microblades—the birth of arrowheads, weapons, and everyday tools. The same might have happened with music, at first produced only by percussion instruments much like those used by the talented musicians of Chicco Sband, or with art, which eventually flourished on cave walls. Who's to say the magnificent paintings we know today weren't inspired by someone tinkering with the ashes of a fire? Some curious "tinkerer" could easily have depicted on his cave walls the epic hunts he had witnessed alongside his friends. Indeed, researchers have found a striking resemblance between ancient cave paintings and drawings created today by autistic individuals.
Consider religion, too. In its earliest forms, it was spread by shamans living in states of trance and hallucination. We might label such behavior "schizophrenia" today. It's striking to think that these same extrasensory experiences once conferred high social status, yet today they are dismissed as mere "disorders."
All of this concerns people and events far distant in time. But what about now? For some years, there has been a place in Milan (Via Luigi Pirandello 84E) called AspieCafè, where every other Saturday, three social promotion organizations—LEM, Asperger Group Onlus, and Aspergerpride—whose mission is to provide spaces for dialogue, integration, and cultural enrichment for people with Asperger's syndrome, organize meetings and games. The people involved simply call themselves Aspies.
We live in a world where flying machines and countless other ideas born from the minds of some "crazy" person are now part of everyday life. Perhaps this AspieCafè—and I hope others like it—will prove to be an incubator of brilliant ideas.
In Italy, the well-known Law 68/99, which aims to promote the employment and workplace integration of people with disabilities through support services and targeted placement, does not seem to adequately protect the right to work for Aspies. Despite this apparent gap, many professionals manage to balance their condition with their careers, sometimes to the latter's advantage. I was once told of an engineer obsessed with order who was put in charge of logistics at a shopping mall, or of an insurance company that hired a loss adjuster whose meticulous attention to detail exposed fraud schemes perpetrated by resourceful clients.
As archaeologist Spikins reminds us: "What makes us human is not a single 'normal' mind, but a complex interdependence among diverse minds—and autism, it seems, played a key role in this."
Emanuele Mendola, 2017
