Thanks for the book references. I've read several interviews with her ~ which must have been very difficult to do ~ but it seemed to me she thinks there's some survival advantage to autism.
That's the writer's point.
Kind of like Heidelbergensis. They were among the first to bury their dead, but their immediate past ancestors were like animals and just left their dead behind.
I've read several of her books, but not recently, so maybe I have forgotten about references to "survival advantage." I think she said she has used the obsessive side of autism to advantage. What I really remember from her books is the amazing insight that animals and autistic people (and to a certain extent, normal young children) are similar. All lack fully developed cognitive abilities, so they are dominated much more by emotion, esp. fear. You can see a lot of repetitive obsessive behavior in some domestic animals, as well as entrenched phobias which are very hard to overcome.
The other thing about Grandin is that she might not have survived alone in a hypothetical primitive setting. She turned out well because her parents and teachers worked very hard to encourage her, even though psychological "experts" recommended throwing her in an institution and walking away.