Should We Clone Neanderthals?

reply to post by Pinke


Yes, it would be interesting to observe, but it would be physically impossible to create. You can't just throw a cloned newborn out into the wilderness and expect it to learn how to survive on its own. It would have to be taught survival skills by someone. This would inevitably include the learning of language from the teacher. There would always be contamination from our culture. Not to mention the fact that evolution of a species happens at such a slow rate, we would never really be able to measure what happens. Only through archaeology can we learn these things.

We already wiped out the Neanderthals.
Now we want to bring them back?

Let’s bring back a living breathing person.
A new baby into the world, the only one of it’s kind.
A curiosity, for scientific advancement,

Why don’t we put our own house in order first?
Before considering, resurrecting and welcoming another species.
Is that not how it’s supposed to work?

I think for scientific scrutiny one should then create two comparable Neanderthal communities.
One in an ice-age reserve ( perhaps with other cloned wildlife from that era), and one which traces Neanderthals as individuals in our society.
The reserve community could consist of initial actors, who teach kids what we currently know about Neanderthals - perhaps just like we might socialize a cloned baby mammoth with modern elephants.
The other community will be adopted into modern human families.
That kind of study is far from ideal, but it might reveal our crucial differences, or no difference at all.

Of course, we'd first have to create a surrogate mother, which, for a pure Neanderthal is problematic, because their heads were too big for the birth canal of a Homo Sapiens female.
Hybrid babies may be possible, but a Sapiens female will probably die during the birth of a Neanderthal baby.

Originally posted by Kailassa

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Its an animal...just an animal.

You are an animal too, biologically speaking.

Yes, I did mention that also in later posts.

cloning animals out of extinction = good.

No regard for the consequences . . .

We are discussing neanderthal...not t-rex's
but actually...I would be in favor of those being cloned back...with proper precautions to ensure public safety of course...
big island, etc.

there should be no religious uproar about cloning neandertals...because..well, they aren't man and therefore who cares.

They were "man" enough to be relatively recent direct ancestors of many of us.
Neanderthal DNA is 99.7 percent identical to modern human DNA.
Neanderthals successfully mated with modern humans.

Trinkhaus adds that most living humans probably have much more Neanderthal DNA than the new study suggests.
"One to 4 percent is truly a minimum," Trinkaus added. "But is it 10 percent? Twenty percent? I have no idea."
news.nationalgeographic.com...

Thus, not only were Neanderthals a type of human, but most humans living today are partly Neanderthal.

This was directed at any religious opposition...the mainstream religions get all weirded out when cloning humans are discussed, but have no opinion about animals. by their logic, this should be outside of their domain of giving a rats ---- because...well, God created man in his image...and they also don't believe in evolution, therefore...this is not their domain to give opinions on overall.

just defining a line

and in regards to them developing nukes...well, we took em out once, we will take em out again if they get silly.

You suggest we are so superior we have a right to clone these "just animals" and then discuss the possibility of them building nukes?
Please be careful, if you about-turn too fast your head may fall off.

never said they weren't just as clever as us...matter of fact, that is exactly why I think its a good idea to clone them back into existance...study, watch from afar how they develop from cave dwellers into tribal, village, etc...a bit like watching our own history evolve in front of our eyes. I see no experimentation that need be done beyond some hidden cameras monitoring the tribes and never bothered to watch how they evolve

We likely have quite a bit of Neanderthal DNA is us already. Thyere is a thread on this topic. If you met a Neanderthal on a bus, you'd likely not even think it strange. They are within the variation we have in our own species. My guess is they could learn as easily has humans, get college degrees, and contribute to the human species just as much as any of us. They wouldn't suddenly revert to living in caves and cannibalism--that's absurd. Both variations of humans were at about the same stage of development when they were alive.

reply to post by SaturnFX


“see how they develop from cave dwellers into tribal, villages etc..”

How long would that take, do you imagine?
How long would it take us given the same education and environment?

Why not give them a Harvard education?
Would that not be more constructive?
We might learn something!
We might even be ashamed of what we’ve done.
Look at the state of this planet.
Look at the state of we humans.

You know this isn’t some monkey.
That fell from a tree.
It’s a fellow hominid.
We interbred with them.
Can’t get much closer than that.

And what about those big brains,
Doesn’t that count for anything?

Thankfully it probably will never happen

Originally posted by glitch88
reply to post by Pinke

 

You can't clone culture so wanting to just clone a bunch of them and throw them on an island is not going to show what they used to be like.
--------

You can't just throw a cloned newborn out into the wilderness and expect it to learn how to survive on its own. It would have to be taught survival skills by someone. This would inevitably include the learning of language from the teacher. There would always be contamination from our culture.

I was waiting for somebody to make those two valid points.

It would be the same if we attempted to clone a mammoth ..... the newborn mammoth would probably have to be carried by a surrogate mother elephant and then raised and socialised by them also.

reply to post by snusfanatic


Of course they are humans! A subspecie but still human. Aren't there a wide variety monkeys? Fish? They were living, breathing, tool using, thinking, hunter gatherers that created art, made crude jewelry, and were closely related to us. Do we not see a wide variety of humans to this day? Chinese with broad flat faces? African tribes with a wide variety of physical characteristics in skull shapes, height, facial features that distinguish them from neighboring tribes at times? Races that tend to have more hair on their arms and backs and hands? To bring them back to life for curiosity or experimentation sounds like the Nazis considering Jews as an inferior race and therefore subject to no rules. Fine, they had heavy bones and thick skulls, but there are a heck of a lot of thick skulled people around here too.

reply to post by jaxnmarko

I wouldn't immediately compare every social experiment to the Nazis.
Aren't we all the products of past or present experiments in social policy and ideology?
Didn't all our ancestors engage in selective breeding?

As for Neanderthals - if the surrogate mother(s) issue can be solved - who knows?
Maybe it would be good to have them back?
As long as they shave their faces twice a month and get over the speech impediment (imagine - a whole new accent of English!), they might enjoy our culture.

I just hope we're not cloning back some Neanderthal AIDS with their genes - some disease that really wiped them out...
Time for extra, extra, extra thick condoms?

reply to post by halfoldman

I think a lot of celebrities would love a Neanderthal child for their collections.
I'm not so sure that's a good idea. They may be cute as kids, but when that extra-human strength begins bulging...
I wouldn't like a Neanderthal teenager running wild - especially in our culture of already poor impulse control.
I mean, just imagine Paris Hilton with the muscle power of a gorilla.

Rather keep them in a reserve with cave-bears, wooly rhinos, mammoths and other cloned critters.
We know certain things - like their muscles were better for stabbing than throwing.
So teach them that, and enough modern culture to assimilate.

reply to post by Aquarius1


I think we should clone Neanderthals and elect them to congress. They will obviously do a better job than what is currently being done.

Good grief -- NO!

They're humans! "Homo" is the human lineage/human race. From early h. sapiens through homo eregaster, homo neanderthalis and so forth, they're all humans. They could speak, they walk upright, and they reason and create.

They're more similar to us than wolves are to huskies.

Yet, as we see in this thread here, most think of them as animals.

Given the way we treat our fellow humans, I think it's a crime to create a set of humans who would be immediately treated as convenient non-humans to be enslaved and subjected to medical tests and working conditions that we'd all reject.

No. A thousand times no. Not until our race "grows up" more.

reply to post by Aquarius1


My guess would be so that the government can use them as super soldiers. Teach them to shoot a gun give them a treat point where you want them to kill. The Neanderthal Skeletal structure is much thicker than modern humans 2-2.5 times thicker. They also shrugged off pain that most of us would find completely debilitating. That's what I would think the use of a cloned Neanderthal would be. Just my two pennies.

Oh! I almost forgot the most intriguing thing about Neanderthals. 90% of humans outside of Africa have traces of Neanderthal DNA. Just FYI....
I don't have where I got the info, but you can do the research it's there. So before anyone gets all upity about it's not human you may want to rethink your words.

Another thing that is forgotten here is that the Neanderthals aren't so far from us that they were completely reliant on instinct. Someone will have to nurse them and teach them how to hunt. You can't just create one and as a baby put it on an island and expect it to become a useful adult. Since we don't have any adult Neanderthals today, I supposed we would have to teach it, which means it would be little different from Homo Sapien.

Originally posted by Shadowed
reply to post by Aquarius1

 

My guess would be so that the government can use them as super soldiers. Teach them to shoot a gun give them a treat point where you want them to kill. The Neanderthal Skeletal structure is much thicker than modern humans 2-2.5 times thicker. They also shrugged off pain that most of us would find completely debilitating. That's what I would think the use of a cloned Neanderthal would be. Just my two pennies.

I would like to think you are joking, if not I couldn't disagree with you more, don't we have enough killing machines in the world, what we should be doing is eliminating wars and killing of any kind.

reply to post by Byrd

Good grief -- NO!

They're humans! "Homo" is the human lineage/human race. From early h. sapiens through homo eregaster, homo neanderthalis and so forth, they're all humans. They could speak, they walk upright, and they reason and create.

They're more similar to us than wolves are to huskies

You are absolutely right Byrd, I don't understand why some are not getting this..

Yet, as we see in this thread here, most think of them as animals.

Since we are all animals guess some think we are the better animal, they might want to think how we are at times treated like animals or slaves.

Given the way we treat our fellow humans, I think it's a crime to create a set of humans who would be immediately treated as convenient non-humans to be enslaved and subjected to medical tests and working conditions that we'd all reject.

No. A thousand times no. Not until our race "grows up" more.

Therein lies the problem, will our race ever grow up, we are on the road to destroying ourselves.

Thank you for posting.

reply to post by Aquarius1


Trust me I don't agree with cloning anything. That is why I chose not to be a geneticist about 12 years ago. Even though it is my love and it interests me to no end. The morality of cloning is disgraceful and disgusting.
I was illustrating what I think they would use it for.

reply to post by Shadowed


Thank you for clarifying, I understand why you didn't want to go into that field, more then likely with government funding and many times they take your work and not for the good of mankind.

Thank you for posting.

Nature makes it possible to clone. It is allowed. Then why don't use that opportunity for scientific research. I am positive, that if they already have the science available to clone men, the US gov has already done it, or is in the process of doing it.

It's almost 2012. Gotta be careful about cloning things.

I would hate for us to clone a 'Neanderthal' and it turns out they're really the Anunnaki, ushering in the second coming.

I've been following this thread all day and whilst I find its premise quite ridiculous, it has kept me amused for hours.

I doubt we were to much different to Neanderthal, I suspect we where just monkeys who could throw the stick/stone further and runaway faster.

Dont bring them back, they do not deserve to be exposed to us again, we would only find another way to wipe them out.

LONG LIVE NEANDERTHAL DOWN WITH MONKEYS WITH STICKS.