The apparent rise in autistic people in the last 40 years

Question

I’m curious as to the seeming rise of autistic humans in the last decades.

Is it that it was just not understood and therefore not diagnosed/reported?

Are there environmental or even societal factors that have corresponded to this increase in cases?

In: Biology

Answer 1

How I would explain it to a 5 year old: if you look for the color blue but only know that navy blue is blue do you count baby blue, sky blue, teal blue, sea foam blue, midnight blue? Now that you know all shades of blue are indeed blue you count them now! The shades were always there you just did not count them as blue.