Should We Clone Neanderthals?

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
I believe Neanderthal was able to speak. A source I posted earlier in this thread talks about them making complex tools and weapons, without any contact with modern man. To build complex tools you will have to get an idea, test it, exchange ideas etc...
They were humans, not humanoid or something, but actual human.

I am in agreement with you Sinter Klaas, there seems to be two sides on this issue, but if they were able to invent tools, hunt and gather, sing (that alone tells me they would talk] and made music that must have been highly developed and intelligent.

Thank you for posting.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

Originally posted by Kailassa
I always suspected the better man lost, in that survival competition.

Perhaps Neanderthals were too busy singing and dancing to fight off cannibalistic raids from their nasty little neighbours.

If governments ever allow such cloning to take place, you can be sure it will be for nefarious purposes.

Perhaps the "gentle giants" that many of us are familiar with have active Neanderthal genes.

You people amuse me.
Yes, everything is better than humans.
Neanderthals were enlightened species, wolves are more spiritually aware, hell, a dung beetle has a better personality than a human.

You People? Way to go, categorise your opponent as belonging to some ill-defined and imaginary group and then throw ridiculous insults at that group.

Perhaps you should at least get your facts straight.
Neanderthals were humans.

Listen, in clinical terms, this is known as reflection...meaning you take the attributes you personally have and put it on to other people. If you are a drug addict, suddenly everyone on earth in your eyes is a drug addict. If you are a murderer, everyone is a murderer. . . . .
. . . but that only applies to one person...so you should ask yourself, why do you feel that way about yourself?

You have a point, here.

I'm from a family of tall, strong, reddish-haired people, and we all love singing, playing instruments and dancing.
And despite the hereditary strong physiques, we're a very gentle crowd. - And I'm into jewellery making.
Oh, we do pretty well on IQ tests, too, not that they measure true intelligence particularly well.

So I guess it's quite natural for me to identify with the large-brained, musical Neanderthals and appreciate their qualities.

Originally posted by Aeons
Even better - let us extend out the idea that humans that aren't intelligent enough aren't fully humans.

I assume then that all the people under a certain IQ level qualify as not being human enough. They are "less human" than a smarter human.

Those with high IQs are allowed to experiment on other "lesser" human by virtue of the fact that being smarter makes you "more" human.

"Lesser" animals, which smarter better humans are merely projecting onto. Anthropomorphizing the retarded.

Interesting, isn't it?

We're being given insight into the mentality of those Dr Mengeles types who carried out such cruel experiments on other people, supposedly for the benefit of mankind.

I wonder if it's plutonium porrige time at the orphanage yet?

reply to post by schuyler


Neanderthal could speak I have a documentary that I think may help out here.






From this you can really see just how human these "animals" were.

reply to post by Shadowed


Thank you for the video documentary, will watch it tomorrow when I am more awake. I already believe they could speak.

Originally posted by Sherlock Holmes

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Its an animal...just an animal. cloning animals out of extinction = good.

Why is cloning an extinct animal ''good'' ?
Don't be obtuse.
A species is a group of animals that can produce fertile offspring amongst themselves upon mating.
Are you saying that it would be ok to exploit and experiment on a living being purely because it wouldn't produce a fertile baby if we had sex with it ?

Is that how you would seriously, ethically justify your suggestion of dumping some hapless neanderthals on an island ?
How would the neanderthals cope after being ''created'' without any parents or tribe to guide them through their formative years ?
It would be a truly horrific experience for these unfortunate neanderthals.

Have you not got a conscience ?

He can justify it easily; just class Neanderthals as Zygotes:

Originally posted by SaturnFX
the experiment is giving them life..a biological experiment involving dna strands and a zygote..are we not allowed to experiment on zygotes now?
equal rights for zygote movement...never heard of it.

By the way, a Neanderthal/modern human mating would be even likelier to produce fertile offspring new than it was when our ancestors originally mated. We share 99.5% - nearly 99.9% of our DNA with them. As some of this shared DNA has come from mating with them long ago, obviously we could produce fertile offspring together back when we had even less in common than we do now.

It would seem the assumption that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9% similar in content and identity no longer holds.

The researchers were astonished to locate 1,447 CNVs in nearly 2,900 genes, the starting "templates" written in the DNA that are used by cells to make the proteins which drive our bodies.

This is a huge, hitherto unrecognised, level of variation between one individual and the next.

"Each one of us has a unique pattern of gains and losses of complete sections of DNA," said Matthew Hurles, of the UK's Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

So if you met a random Neanderthal, it's possible his genes would be closer to yours than those of your next-door neighbour.

Scientists are no longer agreed that we should regard Neanderthals as a separate species.

With the similarities so great between us and this branch of our ancestors, there is only one way to decide on the morality of experimenting on Neanderthals. "Would it be ethical to do this to our own children?"

People are forgetting, any cloned Neanderthal will be someone's child, because the only way to create it would be to place the cloned zygote into a human mother for gestation. Then, for optimum development, the baby would need a human mother figure to cuddle and feed it, and to teach it the basics needed for human development.

What sort of outcry would there be when these mothers were expected to give up the children they loved to be "observed" in a colony on a desert island?
What sort of realism would there be in a colony which began with children who had all suffered this trauma?
The experiment would tell us more about the effects of such trauma on humans than it would about Neanderthals.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by SaturnFX

 

Sure. First it starts with, "Hey, look at the guys with the heavy unibrow."
Then the screaming starts.

You're talking about "observing" creatures which could likely be as intelligent as humans.

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

and?

I did say seperate on a isolated island...let them pick up where they left off...living in caves and gnawing on berries...in a few hundred (or thousand) years, they may get the tech to slap something together and see what is beyond the ocean world they live on.

Could be a fascinating study...and hey, its not like they will complain about it once they realize whats going on...being they were initially extinct and whatnot.

Your idea reminds me of the Jim Carrey movie called The Truman Show, I think alot of people if aware of this study will try interfere somehow.

Imagine they saw a plane pass through the sky overhead

Originally posted by Kailassa
He can justify it easily; just class Neanderthals as Zygotes:

If someone is attempting to justify it on those grounds, then that is intellectually dishonest.

Yes, the initial experiment is on a zygote and a few DNA strands, but clearly the intention of the experiment is to create a living, breathing creature purely for a group of voyeuristic humans to spy on.

The whole idea is completely twisted.

Originally posted by Kailassa
People are forgetting, any cloned Neanderthal will be someone's child, because the only way to create it would be to place the cloned zygote into a human mother for gestation. Then, for optimum development, the baby would need a human mother figure to cuddle and feed it, and to teach it the basics needed for human development.

What sort of outcry would there be when these mothers were expected to give up the children they loved to be "observed" in a colony on a desert island?
What sort of realism would there be in a colony which began with children who had all suffered this trauma?
The experiment would tell us more about the effects of such trauma on humans than it would about Neanderthals.

Sadly, I think many people just don't care, rather than forgetting.

This is why any experiment would be completely fruitless, as the scenario would be so warped and unnatural, that it would yield practically no valid data about neanderthals.

They would be largely mimicking the behaviour of their homo sapiens mother that brought them up, so as you say, there would be no realism at all.

reply to post by SaturnFX


Yo SaturnFX,

I did mention "SPORE and POPULOUS" they were both great games, I don't wanna be seen as a God but it would be interesting to see if they did start to worship us anyway, if they saw our aerial vehicles, that's assuming they were capable of such thoughts. I remember reading somewhere about a tribe, cut off from modern civilisation, that were first visited by a team of western scientist who arrived by aeroplane, when they returned a few years later this tribe had built statues (looking for a better word there, they were made from trees and plants) of the planes and had started to worship the team as higher beings.

If the idea was to be taken seriously then I think you are right, a covert camera set up would do the trick. Have you seen Battle Royale? A set up similar to that would work. The idea is completely ridiculous though!

I'm not sure if cloning a Neanderthal would really be of much benefit. Perhaps medically, but to really study how they lived you would need the same conditions exactly, otherwise its just a neanderthal growing up in modern times and therefore wouldn't know the difference. I
think they had a high level of intelligence and would make the best of any situation, and I don't think a laboratory is a good situation to be in for any creature of this earth.

reply to post by Sherlock Holmes


Thank you. The callousness and absence of ethics in this thread really is breathtaking. Sorry to be "judgmental", but if the thinking that cloned creatures have no feelings, no soul, or emotion or that it is somehow "okay" to just create a toy or a "subject" without regard for any of that, wtf? Obviously, human ancestor or not, no obligation is felt toward this beings quality of life or rights or....crap, maybe that's the idea.
This is extremely dark. Sick.

reply to post by SaturnFX


Wow - look at him go. Punching down strawmen he crafts first.

Wonderful Job.

reply to post by DogsDogsDogs


As a man of science and a man that has firm moral beliefs, I have to draw the line at scientific endeavours that ignore any kind of ethics in the researcher's pursuit of knowledge.

I would say that many posters on this subject display the same kind of ethos that Dr. Mengele had.

While it'd be unfair to directly equate these posters with Dr. Mengele, the similarities still arise.

Originally posted by Kailassa
He can justify it easily; just class Neanderthals as Zygotes:

Hi, I suppose I could, however I didn't. Why, do you see neanderthals as zygotes?

I see zygotes as zygotes personally.

As far as taking a single statement without the former statement I was replying to in order to purposefully take it out of context, well...attempting to spread disinformation for what you clearly see as your losing argument only speaks volumes about your intellectual dishonesty verses any actual fact.

People are forgetting, any cloned Neanderthal will be someone's child, because the only way to create it would be to place the cloned zygote into a human mother for gestation. Then, for optimum development, the baby would need a human mother figure to cuddle and feed it, and to teach it the basics needed for human development.

What sort of outcry would there be when these mothers were expected to give up the children they loved to be "observed" in a colony on a desert island?
What sort of realism would there be in a colony which began with children who had all suffered this trauma?
The experiment would tell us more about the effects of such trauma on humans than it would about Neanderthals.

Fair point. The bringing the neanderthal from fetus to adult is not something I offhand know the solution for without something playing out as you said.
Meh, never said I had all the answers...not my field of expertise.

Originally posted by Aeons
reply to post by SaturnFX

 

Wow - look at him go. Punching down strawmen he crafts first.

Wonderful Job.

No clue what your talking about...but I am glad you are clearly excited about something. Being happy is a good thing

Originally posted by SaturnFX
Hi, I suppose I could, however I didn't. Why, do you see neanderthals as zygotes?

I see zygotes as zygotes personally.

You said earlier:

biological experiment involving dna strands and a zygote..are we not allowed to experiment on zygotes now? equal rights for zygote movement...never heard of it.

You are being intellectually dishonest here.

Clearly, this isn't about zygotes. It's about the potential of the experiment being successful, and ''it's only a zygote'' turning into a fully functional living being.

By definition, any speculative attempt at creating a neanderthal through embryonic research and tests is done so in the hope that the zygote or embryo will become a living, breathing neanderthal.

You can't hide behind this fact.

Originally posted by SaturnFX

A species is a group of animals that can produce fertile offspring amongst themselves upon mating.

Are you saying that it would be ok to exploit and experiment on a living being purely because it wouldn't produce a fertile baby if we had sex with it ?

I said no such thing. observation is not exploitation and experimentation...the experiment is giving them life..a biological experiment involving dna strands and a zygote..are we not allowed to experiment on zygotes now?
equal rights for zygote movement...never heard of it.

just to put context to the snippet the above poster keeps bringing up

the experimentation was on the zygote to create the clone...a zygote in my mind is not yet a lifeform..just a fertile egg

once it becomes a living thing, it would then be moved into a observation roll...like you, me, a pet, a zoo animal, a deep jungle tribe, etc.

reply to post by WorstCaseScenario

I remember reading somewhere about a tribe, cut off from modern civilisation, that were first visited by a team of western scientist who arrived by aeroplane, when they returned a few years later this tribe had built statues (looking for a better word there, they were made from trees and plants) of the planes and had started to worship the team as higher beings.

They are called Cargo Cults.

www.britannica.com...
www.scientificamerican.com...

Sure, the island idea sounds swell.I reckon we can make a reality show around it and stuff...to spice things up, throw in a bunch of female degenerate criminals or annoying celebrities like paris hilton, lady gaga etc and watch the sparks fly...

We could call it neanderthal holocaust or something...lolz

Personally, I say creating a living group of potentially breeding Neanderthals is worth a try. If we have the science to do it, I say give it a shot. It might help us figure a little more out about genetics in some way that might help a few people here and there. We're a curious bunch. That's a perfectly good reason to do it.

I suppose we already have enough regular human beings on the planet, and any one human life is pretty cheap these days. We can work hard to cure more diseases, but we've already done such a bang up job there that we have more people around than we know what to do with. A few more people, even Neanderthals, aren't going to make a lot of difference.

And if they eventually grew to a decent-sized population, I'm sure we have enough racial and ethnic hatred to go around, so we can include them in the fun, too. Just like when we "discovered" American Indians. First it was a miracle. Then it was a novelty. Then uninteresting. Then we couldn't hate them fast enough. People are funny that way.

The archaic human species known as the Neanderthals lived in Spain alongside anatomically modern humans - our own direct forebears - until as recently as 24,000 years ago. Soon afterwords the Neanderthals became extinct. Archaeologists suspect it may be the first example of ethnic cleansing in history.

This is an excerpt from Graham Hancock's first novel called Entangled as part of the forward. What caught my eye was ethnic cleansing. The Neanderthals are referred to by "the uglies" in the book.

I received this book today, it is now available in the U.S. and can be gotten at amazon.com, having read all of Hancock's non-fiction books like is best selling Fingerprints of the Gods, this should be a fascinating read, although this is fiction there is much fact in the book based on research from the likes of Dr. Rick Strassman who did a government funded study on '___' and wrote a book called D.M.T. The Spirit Molecule which I have also read.