Geeks, Genes, and the Evolution of Asperger Syndrome, by Dean Falk and Eve Penelope Schofield.  University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2018,  243 pp.

The Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Dean Falk, known for her work on the endocast of the “Hobbit” (Homofloresiensis), establishing its position in hominid ancestry, and on the gross anatomy of Einstein's brain, gave a Neurology Grand Rounds presentation (2020) in which she discussed brain size, morphology, and the “evo-devo” approach to hominid distinctions and child development. Humans have motherese, the term she used for our universal musical baby talk, the result of separation because our infants can't cling, which “bootstrapped” language evolution. In Falk's “botanic age” great apes came down from their tree nests, feet lost the ability to cling as hands became more human, and botanical materials were made into tools like baby slings and fishing rods. Microevolutionary changes in the left hemisphere led both to substrates for scientific ability and high-functioning autism, in which social awkwardness belies a yearning for contact.

Falk's linking an evo-devo basis for scientific ability and high-functioning autism rang a bell for me, and led me to reach out to her. In 1988 I had published a speculative hypothesis about the then-current nerd idea, with literary references from Nemo to Nimoy and beyond. The opposition of jocks versus nerds was then prominent, nerds were