Autism and the imagination of the ancient, pre-civilization world

The concept of autism as a pre-civilizational condition is Naoki Higashida’s speculative account of autistic difference: autistic people, he proposes, are born outside civilization and resemble travellers from a distant past. It turns experiences often treated as deficits into signs of another relation to time, communication, the body, and the natural world. The book presents this as an imaginative theory, not an established explanation of autism, and sets its broad claims beside testimony that repeatedly acknowledges individual variation.

A Personal Theory of Difference

In reflecting on autism itself, Higashida says that autistic people are born outside the regime of civilization. He explicitly marks this as his own made-up theory. In his account, autism has somehow arisen in response to humanity’s history of killing and its selfish destruction of the planet. He imagines a deep crisis behind that history, and gives autistic difference a possible meaning within it: autistic people might help the world remember what truly matters for Earth. Their physical resemblance to other people, he suggests, does not erase how different their experience may be. He describes them instead as travellers from the distant past, a phrase that makes difference a matter of historical and sensory orientation rather than outward appearance.

That proposal gains its force from the way the book insists that outward behaviour can conceal complex experience. The introduction describes thought and sensory input as overwhelming when the mind’s filtering “editors” are imagined to have left, and recounts how an autistic child’s distress could be difficult for a parent to understand. Higashida’s own account likewise emphasizes the difficulty of expressing oneself to people one loves. The pre-civilizational idea offers a metaphorical frame for such distance: the problem is not simply that autistic people lack inner life, but that their experience may not fit the categories and expectations through which others interpret it.

Water and the Imagined Past

The idea becomes most concrete in Higashida’s account of being in water. He imagines a return to a time before human beings existed: aquatic life emerged and evolved, he wonders, but why did it have to come onto dry land and become human, living under the rule of time? He presents this as a mystery, not as biological history. The imagined past supplies a contrast with the demands of human life as he experiences them, particularly the pressure of time and the difficulty of expressing himself.

In water, he describes quiet, freedom, and happiness, and a sense that no one is pressing autistic people to do anything. Whether still or swimming, a person there can feel at one with time’s pulse. Outside it, stimulation from sight and sound makes it hard to estimate duration: a second and an hour are both difficult to grasp. Water thus functions in this account as more than a setting of ease. It represents a possible condition in which external demands recede and time can be experienced without the same anxiety. The contrast does not promise that autism can be cured or escaped; it makes visible how strongly the surrounding world can shape the experience of freedom.

Time, Memory, and Everyday Pressure

Higashida connects this imagined distance from civilization to time’s uncertain passage. He describes time as continuous and without clear boundaries, which makes it difficult to grasp. A clock can show that time has passed, but cannot make its passage directly felt. He says that one second may seem infinitely long while twenty-four hours can rush by in a flash; time is fixed in memory through visual scenes, leaving the next moment uncertain. These are accounts of his own experience and of how he understands autistic experience, not a claim that every autistic person perceives time identically.

The book also links temporal difficulty to repetition and planning. Higashida explains that asking again what day it is or whether school will take place the next day does not mean he failed to understand the answer: he may quickly forget what he has just heard, and a recent statement does not feel clearly distinct from something heard long ago. He pictures memory as a pool of dots, returning to a remembered point by asking questions. Visual schedules, meanwhile, can make a plan feel so firmly imprinted that a change unsettles him; repeatedly checking the time can prevent him from enjoying what he is doing. Taken together, these passages show why conventional arrangements of time can feel less like neutral aids than added pressure. The imagined past gathers these concrete difficulties into a larger contrast between autistic experience and a civilization organized around schedules, sequence, and prediction.

Sensory Experience and the Limits of Generalization

The theory also resonates with Higashida’s descriptions of sensory uncertainty. Certain noises, he explains, can produce fear not merely because they are unpleasant, but because continued listening may make a person lose a sense of where they are. Cupping the ears is then a way to protect oneself and regain that orientation. The noises that cause difficulty differ from person to person, and Higashida notes that he has gradually become more accustomed to some by pressing his hands over his ears less heavily. The example gives his broader image of unfamiliar, ancient senses a specific experiential basis, while also cautioning against treating one person’s account as a rule for everyone.

That caution matters throughout the book. The introduction says that each autistic person has an individual variation, and Higashida himself notes that he was thirteen when he wrote the answers; sparse responses should be read in that context. He explains that training with Ms Suzuki at Hagukumi School and support from his mother enabled him to communicate through writing and, later, on a computer. He hopes the book will help readers understand what may be happening in autistic people’s minds, especially when they lack a means to express themselves. The pre-civilizational idea belongs to this effort to make an unfamiliar inner life imaginable, but remains a personal theory rather than a universal account.

The Meaning and Tension of the Metaphor

The image of people arriving from a distant past reverses the usual direction of judgment. Rather than measuring autistic people only against the pace and conventions of contemporary society, Higashida suggests that their difference might prompt others to reconsider what society values. His speculation about planetary harm gives that reversal an ethical dimension: autistic people could, simply by being here, remind the world what matters for Earth. He describes the possibility as a quiet pleasure, not as a claim that autistic people have a special duty to repair the world.

The metaphor remains in tension with the detailed accounts of ordinary barriers in the book. Difficulty communicating, coping with sensory input, and predicting what comes next are not merely signs of belonging to an imagined earlier era; they are present experiences that can make daily life hard. The book’s account therefore holds two perspectives together: an individual’s own language for making sense of difference, and the practical need for other people to listen and provide understanding. The pre-civilizational image matters not because it explains autism scientifically, but because it challenges the assumption that difference is equivalent to an empty or lesser inner life.