The title says it all. As of now, we actually have the technological advancements to do it, as well as a fully sequenced Neanderthal Genome (at the moment, a few minor techniques are in the works that would make it easier). So if we could clone a Neanderthal without error, would you be okay with it? Why or why not?
Aren't we Europeans all part Neanderthal?
It'd serve no real purpose except doing it for the sake of curiosity (and the Juras... Neanderthal Park). And he/she/they would be Neanderthal only in genetic code (unless there is actually genetic memory and we can trigger it).
Why bother when there are footballers?
There aren't enough politicians?
Lets make some Footballer Politicians then !!!
Of course we should!
Well, Neandrathals were actually another species of humanoid that died off, while at some point they lived parallel with homo sapiens (same time period, occasional territorial battles?).
I'll agree with the essence of the previous posts though ... its kind of useless to clone a Neandrathal because he or she would be too human-like- it wouldn't be able to live a happy life among humanity, and it would be too humanlike for us to feel good about exploiting it for our own gains.
Prehistoric ANIMALS though ... is definitely a win for cloning. Im just kind of against the cloning of prehistoric people. Although, clones of Jesus and Hitler would be interesting. Maybe have them attend the same elementary school.
It's curious that so many people think that cloning a Neanderthal would be useless. In fact, it would be one of the greatest boons to psychology, neurology, biology, and medicine that we could ever have hoped for. Think about it. The closest primate we can compare ourselves to is a chimpanzee, whom we share a common ancestor with many millions of years ago. Neanderthals? We share a common ancestor a paltry 400,000-500,000 years ago. So basically, if we cloned a Neanderthal we would have a very closely related being with which to compare of psychology and anatomy. What we would learn in practical application would be incredible.
Neanderthals had immense resistance to bacterial infections. Why? If we had a Neanderthal to study, we could isolate the mechanisms responsible and put that remarkable information to use.
Neanderthals, as it turns out, were just as clever as we were with a brain to body mass ratio that was equal to ours. What does that mean? It means that even though they were intelligent, they have an intelligence that evolved differently than ours and may very well be of a different category than ours. Imagine the insight that would give us when it came to neuroplasticity, learning mechanisms, and neurological conditions?
So actually, I posit that cloning a neanderthal would produce an immense amount of very valuable knowledge. And in fact, I would suspect that a Neanderthal would probably fit very well into Homo sapiens sapiens infrastructure if it is surrounded by that infrastructure from birth. He/she would enjoy sitcoms, the internet, and probably Elemental: War of Magic. The question, though, is largely an ethical one. Should he/she be considered human for the sake of moral consideration? For some reason, these kinds of questions tend to make people squeemish. If it were up to me, I would create a provisional ethical system for a cloned Neanderthal that was ultimately exploitative, but gave that individual a high standard of living and comfortable conditions. In the end, I think the mountains we could learn surpasses minor infractions of liberty.
Can a Neandrathal marry a human?
Would you introduce them to the public school system?
We already have enough Neanderthal's walking around already in this world.
No!
You are quite correct, but you're talking to deff ears.Thanks to some daft French scientist/archeologist/anthropologist who published (wrongfully interpreted) pictures early in the last century, most "humans" have set their minds to that neanderthals were 'stupid', - as you may notice in many of the replies to this thread.
The problem with cloning of Neanderthals is not how intelligent they were. The problem is the intelligence of the humans that want to do the cloning. Just my opinion.
I believe that humans have looked at and tried improving on the species, I think history shows us it wasn't too successful.
I second that! Before we go cloning anything we need to get our own shit together, And to say or think neanderthals were stupid is in itself stupid. It never ceases to amaze me how we think we are so intelligent. We invent something and the first thing we do is poke ourselves in the eye or shoot ourselves in the foot with it.
The answer is 'of course we should', shortly followed by 'what is wrong with you people?' Somebody has to play God, it might as well be us!
.. and I second Demiansky's comment. The ethical questions are important, but we don't know how humans evolved. Seeing a neanderthal to understand recent human evolution, among other things, might enable us to ultimately uplift other species to sapience. Imagine cities on the bottom of the ocean built by tool-using dolphins. Oil leak not looking like such a problem when you have cetaceans with tools.
How can that not be awesome.
I for one welcome our killer whale overlords.
You mean we haven't already?
How about a dinosaur!
Nature selected them for extinction. We should leave them be.
Which is evident when reading posts/replies on this forum....
"Nature selected them for extinction. We should leave them be."
Yeah, and we're next, just in case nobody's paying attention.
Next!
I'm sure we helped them along by killing them and interbreeding.
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