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Should We Clone Neanderthals?

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posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 11:28 AM
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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.

The only relevant data that could be gleaned from something like this would be biological. Any cultural significance is lost when the actual species, that took thousands of years to develop, died out.

Therefore they would be nothing more than lab rats and that is appalling.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 12:37 PM
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Originally posted by glitch88
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.


Actually ... this would be truly fascinating ...

Imagine seeing intelligent beings interacting for the first time. Would they develop their own language? Would they be biologically inclined to invent new Gods? How quickly might they progress? It's an impossible question to answer how much of a being is culture and how much of it is biology in some cases. We could finally answer some of those questions - some of which are so many hundreds of years old.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 12:41 PM
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reply to post by SaturnFX
find a nice big uninhabited island and clone the guys...let em develop untouched by modern man...and just observe from afar to see how they would progress.

all for it.

just need to make sure the ecosystem is balanced...enough genetic diversity to not retard the strain, enough life on the island to where it can easily handle the guys being there, etc.
 

Hauntingly sounds like the creators of the Humans on earth might have thought in the early days of the creation of humanity. I'm talking about the extraterrestrials who might have planted Humans on earth very very long time ago.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 01:32 PM
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Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
How long would it take for the unacceptable to be accepted ?

Who decides what is and isn't acceptable?


I think when you start with secret projects with vague and unknown boundaries, we can pretty much assume these boundaries will be moved or even crossed. Eventually... It seems us humans have a tendency to be attracted to the dark side of the force.... Especially when nobodies looking.

All the more reason to put a light on it.

and what is the "dark side" anyhow...

the darkside to me is making a nuclear bomb, not bringing an extinct species back to life...yet society is fine with designing new ways to murder life...and freaked out about salvaging life.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 01:36 PM
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reply to post by SaturnFX
 





the darkside to me is making a nuclear bomb, not bringing an extinct species back to life...yet society is fine with designing new ways to murder life...and freaked out about salvaging life.


Although I don't agree that cloning Neanderthals is a good thing on the other hand you are absolutely right about making a nuclear bomb and finding new ways to kill.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 02:07 PM
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Consider a clip from a 1980s film called "Quest for Fire":
www.youtube.com...

Neanderthal man was "othered" as a hairy brute for decades, and that view is still hard to change.
A lot of it has to do with stereotypes created around the bones of an athritic Neanderthal.
In the 1980s this film scene was meant to show a Neanderthal attack on Homo Erectus. Nowadays it seems rather topsy-turvey.
The "humans" here of 80 000-years ago appear to be attacked by some form of Homo Erectus, or hominid (Bigfoot?), so it seems more like Neanderthals attacked by Homo Erectus.
I'm not sure quite what the director intended, but our interpretation seems opposite to standard views at the time.
In fact Neanderthals were confused with Bigfoot and Almas in many popular theories.
This now seems increasingly unlikely.

So, how do we interpret the species of man in this film, when the two male protagonists are roused from a somewhat homoerotic slumber?

I think our view of Neanderthal man changed radically along with colonial views of "primitive man".
The last I read 4% of European genes are from the Neanderthals, so I guess they were just us.

Well, if this film represents the hairy guys as Neanderthals, I see no point in breeding them back.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 02:28 PM
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It's people like you that i hear say it is ok to do something like this.That takes away any scepticism that our gov't ,has the same kind of people doing things to people and animals just because we can..You remind me of a 10 year old that says lets put a firecracker up a frogs butt and see what happens..I am truly terrified for our future..



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:02 PM
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Originally posted by earthship35
It's people like you that i hear say it is ok to do something like this.That takes away any scepticism that our gov't ,has the same kind of people doing things to people and animals just because we can..You remind me of a 10 year old that says lets put a firecracker up a frogs butt and see what happens..I am truly terrified for our future..


Just to make sure...

you liken scientific endeavors to sticking firecrackers up frogs butts...right?


do you also equate surgery to the texas chainsaw massacre?



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:07 PM
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Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by SaturnFX
 

Do "animals" ceremonially bury their dead?
Do "animals" make jewelry?



edit on 10/3/2010 by Phage because: (no reason given)



yes they do...humans...are you saying we are not animals?

we only "make jewelry" because our intelligence levels are high enough for us to know how and have the means...if a gorilla was as smart as us and had the means to do it im sure they'd discover how to do it eventually.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:07 PM
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Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by SaturnFX
 

Do "animals" ceremonially bury their dead?
Do "animals" make jewelry?



edit on 10/3/2010 by Phage because: (no reason given)



yes they do...humans...are you saying we are not animals?

we only "make jewelry" because our intelligence levels are high enough for us to know how and have the means...if a gorilla was as smart as us and had the means to do it im sure they'd discover how to do it eventually.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:13 PM
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reply to post by SaturnFX
 


Yeah... I kind of said the exact same thing.

Who will be deciding what's acceptable and what is not ?


Rescuing life and trying to prevent life forms to go extinct are in my opinion a different ball game then cloning a species that has not seen the light of day for at least 10.000 years.
I'm not saying I wouldn't be interested or something. It just feels wrong...

I fail to understand the comparison with a nuclear bomb tho.
However... I'm against the use of nuclear weapons as well.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:17 PM
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It'd be interesting to clone one and study it for scientific research. Other than that, there's no reason for cloning Neanderthals. That's like an advanced species cloning a human once we're extinct or have evolved in the distant future.

Could be interesting though.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 03:22 PM
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Originally posted by snusfanatic
reply to post by Aquarius1
 


yes! they are not humans. I see no ethical issues. Lets clone them and study them if we can.


Neanderthals ’sang and danced’
Steve Mithen of Reading University is in the news again about his forthcoming book – another on cognitive archaeology and evolution.

The BBC have picked up on his argument about neanderthals, language and symbolic behavior [Link]

Prof Mithen thinks the cave- dwellers would have enjoyed the rhythms and sounds made by rap artists.

He said: “People often portray Neanderthals as dull and grumpy but they had a strong sense of music.”

Their songs would have covered emotions such as embarrassment and happiness.

More than words


www.mshanks.com...


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a67250199293.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6192d291de3c.jpg[/atsimg]

Much in Common



I don't agree that they are not human, take a closer look and you may change your mind, not only do they look like us it seems they have the same traits and desires.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:01 PM
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Originally posted by SaturnFX
Its an animal...just an animal.

You are an animal too, biologically speaking.


cloning animals out of extinction = good.

No regard for the consequences . . .


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.


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.


Actually, wasn't there some research done suggesting neanderthals didn't go extinct but rather just interbred with homo sapians and made french people?

That's right, and we beat them because Freedom Fries are so much more nutritious than French Fries.


Actually:

"But the fact is that Chinese and Melanesians are as closely related to Neanderthals" as Europeans, said Reich, a population geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University.
news.nationalgeographic.com...



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:01 PM
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I can see many benefits including:
A better understanding of ourselves
Advances in technology
Possibly unlocking knowledge, or use of other areas of our brain?

But I also see some MAJOR issues
Firstly disease - they may pass on a disease that could be devistating to us, think swine flu & birdflu
Ethical issues - when exactly does one stop being human? Does this being then have the right to reproduce if we clone more than one? What happens when he reproduces with a human (nature will find a way), what rights do the kids have?

Humans have already put thousands of animals in new habitats often to contol another species. Then often it turns out in the new habitat that species thrives and soon they are a bigger problem than the original issue.
If you clone one you open the door to someone creating an army of this species which will likely have higher strength than the average human and a high intellect.

Just some alternate angles to think of



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:07 PM
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There is a controversial book written by an orthodontist who directly studied Neanderthal remains at the Museum of Man in France back in the late 1970's, I think it was called Buried Alive.

If I recall correctly, he came to the conclusion that there was a paleontological conspiracy to characterize the Neanderthal as a less developed human ancestor, when his studies indicated a very "modern" human, fraudulently reconstructed.

His focus was on the skull, jawbones, teeth, since that was his specialty as an orthodontist. I think he first found that they had deliberately misplaced the jawbone to make the resulting appearance less human. He them went on to find other things, like the way they glued the skulls together, etc. Bottom line, Neanderthals seemed much more human than the public was being told.

If I recall, sometime later he came up with a theory, perhaps biased by his "creationist" tendency, but his mostly unwanted "contribution" to the debate suggested that Neanderthals were simply humans, who had lived long life-spans. Yeah, think old Genesis Bible type life spans.

I recall reading about it initially thinking the guy was nutty, but over the years I have seen that a lot of speculation (and fraud) seems to be part of the history of paleontology, for better or worse. Other things too that really make you think, like the fact that Neanderthals are thought to have suffered arthritis. Hmmm, that's something old folks get.

Some other things of note, the fact that the human head and face continues to grow as we age (not just our ears and noses!).

Not to ignite the whole evolution/creation debate, but I do find the ideas interesting. I'm agnostic, I don't really care where the path leads, but I do think that the current developments could provide answers that many may not expect. And as for the creationists, they too might get more than they bargained for, if Neanderthals are proved to be another species. As far as I know, there wasn't a provision for that in the Bible.

"What if" they complete a reasonable Neanderthal genetic sequence, perhaps filling in some blanks, but still within accepted scientific parameters, and come to the conclusion that Neanderthals really are "us", but incredibly old versions, humans who did have longer lifespans, for whatever reasons?

I imagine other possibilities as well. Perhaps there was an ancient flood, and humankind was more advanced prior to a subsequent return to the caves, could "Neanderthals" have been especially bred to do difficult physical work? Again, this genetic research should provide some answers, maybe some we don't quite expect.

JR



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:11 PM
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Yes we should. Then we can all see how stupid they were and how we could never have evolved from them.



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:22 PM
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Considering our developing cultural binary on Neanderthals:
If they look more like the hairy brutes in my "Quest for Fire" clip above, I'd say clone one or two for research, and then leave it.
If they are more like the "Erectus" humans in the clip, yeah, clone them on demand - how much would one cost?



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:27 PM
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reply to post by JR MacBeth
 


Thanks! I really enjoyed your post, and it really made me question a few things. When I went back and looked at the picture of a Neanderthal it immediatly looked like an old man to me, and my gut/instincts screamed that this creature is actually highly intelligent. The complete opposite to what I have always believed.

This is obviously just my personal view that has been influenced by your post - but prior my view was already influenced by science so I would like to see what others think of this. Go back to the picture of the Neanderthal and see what your natural instincts tell you - is this an animal/human to be feared? Does he naturally threaten you or would you consider him to be safe or in the same boat?




edit on 3-10-2010 by byteshertz because: (no reason given)



posted on Oct, 3 2010 @ 04:34 PM
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reply to post by byteshertz
 


Yeah, I see what you're saying. Take away the "hairiness" (the usual speculation in artist's concepts), and they might just look fairly "normal". I like the image someone posted above, it's not the same 'ole.

To me, the info about head bones growing into old age is compelling, but then I see the big rib-cage, and go in another direction. That's when I imagine they could have been perhaps "bred" for a specific purpose, like hard work.

Obviously, this all goes against the standard theories, but it might still go nicely with ancient aliens, who may have been dabbling with creating different breeds, for whatever purposes. I like to stay open to now info anyway!

JR




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