One study I saw indicated that women who were given the sweaty t-shirts of six different men could “guess,” with much-greater-than-chance accuracy, which t-shirt belonged to their partner. When they do genetic studies, it turns out people have a greater-than-chance likelihood of partnering up with someone whose immune system complements theirs genetically (which has evolutionary advantages for the offspring). And then there are the many anecdotes of people who are mysteriously attracted to others who have characteristics that don’t become apparent until later. One friend of mine, a man, only gets asked out by bisexual women. I have many female friends who always wind up with men who cheat. Etc.

This is kind of rambly, and off-topic, but it’s one of my favorite seldom-talked-about issues.

I believe because they were intimately connected to their environment for thousands of years, they developed attributes unique to that environment.

The reason why I brought up telepathy, not in the sense we typically think of (ala “The Time Zone”) is because I have always wondered what Einstein spoke of when he said telepathy was faster than the speed of light. A bit of an obsession, I guess. It’s always been in the back of my head since I read of it a couple years ago. I am a very spiritual person, with a profound belief in the Almighty…so it makes me a little queasy to bring up things that smack of the occult. A lot of what I came across while researching telepathy did, and kind of turned me off.

But the bible does say that we are spiritual beings, it speaks of the opening of the “eyes of our hearts”, and other such notions that are not typical language.

I wonder how many of our gifts are left unopened because they don’t fit the ideas of our present culture. What gifts does the autistic person have that compensate for the unease with language?

Maybe I think too much…

i wonder if the native-american thing about nonverbal communication could be a regional cultural value, though? like we could say, maybe, that europeans tend to value moderation more than americans, or that americans tend to value convenience more than europeans do.
i remember reading something that reminds me of this. it was in a police novel set in the lands of one or more of the southwestern USA tribes. the writer isn’t indigenous, but he is apparently good at getting inside the mixture of cultures over there. he has won awards from the navajos & others for being a friend/embassador of their cultures. in this one scene, the indian detective character was not making any “listening noises” that his white colleague expected, and so he was accused of not listening, when he was really listening like anything. then there was another scene where the native american guy was with an older guy from his tribe, and they understood perfectly, in the silences, that the other was listening/thinking/etc. ok this is really detaily, but i thought it applied somehow. i wonder if you have any indigenous readers who might want to comment re: whether this is a general cultural thing or not?!

But I have no idea if it’s even close to what you folks describe.

Hehehe. Maybe.

Nothing I’m talking about here actually requires telepathy. Just a combination of (in the case you’re talking about) commonality of body language and good pattern recognition. I’m sure that could look ‘telepathic’, the same way I’m sure it looks ‘telepathic’ to many autistic people when non-autistic people read each other and send messages in certain ways that we’re (at least at that point in time) missing completely.