From Chapter Two of ADD:A Different Perception by Thom Hartmann

 Hunters in Our Schools and Offices: The Origin of ADHD

The earliest theories about attention deficit disorder characterized it as a diseased state which had to do with brain damage or dysfunction. At various times it's been lumped in with fetal alcohol syndrome, mental retardation, various genetic mental illnesses, psychiatric disorders resulting from early trauma or childhood abuse, and the theory that parental smoking led to fetal oxygen deprivation.

Prior to the early 1970s, when ADHD was first characterized as a specific disorder, ADHD children and adults were largely treated simply as "bad people" (even though attentional deficits have been recognized in the psychological literature since 1905). They were the kids who always got into trouble, the James Deans of the world, the rootless and unsettled adults like Abraham Lincoln's father, The Lone Ranger, or John Dillinger.

More recent research, however, has demonstrated a high incidence of ADHD among the parents of ADHD children. This discovery caused some psychologists to initially postulate that ADHD was the result of growing up in a dysfunctional family; they suggested that ADHD may follow the same pattern as child or spousal abuse, moving through generations as learned behavior. The dietary?cause advocates contended that children pattern their parent's eating habits, and this accounts for the generational patterns of ADHD. Other studies suggest that, like Down's Syndrome or muscular dystrophy, ADHD is a genetic disease, and a specific gene (The A1 variant of the D2 dopamine receptor gene), has been identified by scientists as the leading candidate.

But if ADHD is a genetic disease or an abnormality, it's a popular one, possibly afflicting as many as 25 million individuals in the United States. (Some estimates put ADHD as occurring in 20 percent of males and 5 percent of females. Other estimates are much lower, hitting a bottom of 3 percent of males and .5 percent of females.) With such a wide distribution among our population, is it reasonable to assume that ADHD is simply a quirk? That it's some sort of an aberration caused by defective genes or child abuse?

When the condition is so widely distributed, inevitable questions arise: Why? Where did ADHD come from?

The answer is: people with ADHD are the leftover hunters, those whose ancestors evolved and matured thousands of years in the past in hunting societies.

There is ample precedent for genetic "diseases" which, in fact, represent evolutionary survival strategies. Sickle?cell anemia, for example, is now known to make its victims less susceptible to malaria. When living in the jungles of Africa where malaria is endemic, it was a powerful evolutionary tool against death by disease; in the malaria?free environment of North America, it became a liability.

The same is true of Tay?Sachs disease, a genetic condition which hits mainly Eastern European Jews, and confers on them a relative immunity to tuberculosis. And even cystic fibrosis, the deadly genetic disease common among Caucasians (one in twenty?five white Americans carries the gene), may represent a genetic adaptation - recent research indicates the cystic fibrosis gene helps protect its victims, at younger ages, from death by such diarrheal diseases as cholera, which periodically swept Europe thousands of years ago.

It's not so unusual, apparently, for humans to have, built into our genetic material, protection against local diseases and other environmental conditions. Certainly, Darwin's theory of natural selection argues in favor of such bodily defenses. Those individuals with the immunities would survive to procreate and pass along their genetic material.

As the human race moved from its earliest ancestors, two basic types of cultures evolved. In the areas which were lush with plant and animal life and had a low human population density, hunters and gatherers predominated. In other parts of the world (particularly Asia), farming or agricultural societies evolved.

SUCCESSFUL HUNTERS

Be it pursuing buffalo in North America, hunting deer in Europe, chasing wildebeest in Africa, or picking fish from a stream in Asia, these hunters needed a certain set of physical and mental characteristics to be successful:

* They constantly monitor their environment.That rustle in the bushes could be a lion or a coiled snake. Failure to be fully aware of the environment and notice the faint sound might mean a swift and painful death. Or, that sound or flash of movement might be the animal the hunter was stalking, and noticing it could mean the difference between a full belly and hunger.

I've walked through forests and jungles with modern Hunter?types, in the United States, Europe, and East Africa, and one characteristic always struck me: they notice everything. A flipped?over stone, a tiny footprint, a distant sound, an odd smell in the air, the direction in which flowers point or moss grows. All these things have meaning to Hunters and, even when walking quickly, they notice everything.

* They can totally throw themselves into the hunt; time is elastic. Another characteristic of a good Hunter is the ability to totally focus on the moment, utterly abandoning all consideration of any other time or place. When the Hunter sees the prey he gives chase through gully or ravine, over fields or through trees, giving no thought to the events of the day before, not considering the future, simply living totally in that one pure moment and immersing himself in it. When involved in the hunt, time seems to speed; when not in the hunt, time becomes slow. While a Hunter's ability to concentrate in general may be low, his ability to utterly throw himself into the hunt at the moment is astonishing.

* They're flexible, capable of changing strategy on a moment's notice. If the wild boar vanishes into the brush, and a rabbit appears, the Hunter is off in a new direction. Orderliness is not particularly important to a Hunter, but the abilities to make a quick decision and then act on it are vital.

* They can throw an incredible burst of energy into the hunt, so much so that they often injure themselves or exceed "normal" capabilities, without realizing it until later. Not unlike that quintessential of all Hunters, the lion, they have incredible bursts of energy - but not necessarily a lot of staying power. Given the choice of describing themselves as the tortoise or the hare in Aesop's famous fable, a Hunter would always say that he or she is the hare.

* They think visually. Hunters often describe their actions in terms of pictures, rather than words or feelings. They create outlines in their heads of where they've been and where they're going. (Aristotle taught a memory method like this, with which a person would visualize rooms in a house, then objects in the rooms. When he gave a speech, he'd simply move from room to room in his memory, noticing the objects therein, which were reminders of the next thing he had to talk about.) Hunters often aren't much interested in abstractions, or else want to convert them to a visual form as quickly as possible. They tend to be lousy chess players, disdaining strategy because they prefer to go straight for the jugular.

* They love the hunt, but are easily bored by mundane tasks such as having to clean the fish, dress the meat, or fill out the paperwork. Donald Haughey, a former senior executive with Holiday Inns, tells the story of how Kemmons Wilson, the legendary founder of Holiday Inns, had a group of executives he called Bear Skinners. Wilson would go out into the world and shoot the bear (negotiate a new hotel site, bring in new financing, open a new division, etc.), and his Bear Skinners would take care of the details of "skinning and cleaning" the deal.

* They'll face danger that "normal" individuals would avoid. A wounded boar, or elephant, or bear, can kill you-<|>and many a Hunter has been killed by his would?be prey. If you extend this analogy to warfare, where the Hunters are often the front line infantry or the most aggressive officers, the same is true. Hunters take risks. Extending this metaphor, Patton was a Hunter, Marshall a Farmer.

* They're hard on themselves and those around them. When your life depends on split?second decisions, your frustration and impatience threshold necessarily tend to be low. A fellow Hunter who doesn't get out of the way of a shot, or a soldier who defies orders and smokes on a dark night showing the enemy your position, cannot be tolerated.

PEOPLE WITH ADHD ARE DESCENDANTS OF HUNTERS

So, the question: where did ADHD come from? If you compare the list of classic ADHD symptoms, and the list of the characteristics of a good hunter, you'll see that they match almost perfectly. In other words, an individual with the ADHD collection of characteristics would make an extraordinarily good hunter. A failure to have any one of those characteristics might mean death in the forest or jungle.

click here for the next chapter, explaining the Farmers among us