Risky Business

Neanderthal Resurrection The Latest Ethical Dilemma For Futurists

By Matthew Bandyk

Posted: February 18, 2009

Everyone knows Jurassic Park and the story of an eccentric entrepreneur who tries to build the world's most insane theme park with living relics from prehistoric times.

What if somebody tried to do the same thing, not with animals from the past, but with "people" from the past?

A recent New York Times article reported that a new genetic breakthrough has raised the scientific possibility of cloning a neanderthal. Cloning normal human beings is controversial enough, but the issue of neanderthal resurrection has another ethical twist on top of that: what rights would these beings have?  Would they even be considered "people?"

Ron Bailey has an article at Reason about the ethical issues of neanderthal resurrection, and he does a little speculating about what we would do with such beings:

So what if we bring back Neanderthals and it turns out that their intellectual capacities are so dissimilar from ours that they cannot cope successfully with modern life? Should we control their fertility so that they go extinct again? This comes uncomfortably close to the eugenic arguments used to justify sterilizing people who were deemed mentally defective in the 20th century. Or perhaps Neanderthals could be placed in reservations where they would be allowed to develop without further interference from modern humans. Would this be akin to confining them to a zoo?

Bailey doesn't really get into why we would want to bring back neanderthals.  But with his last point about a zoo, I can see one profit motive that could attract very adventurous investors.

Here's a more troubling business idea: what if somebody cloned neanderthals not for us to look at, but to work in our home as servants--a Morlock-like underclass. But we know what happened with the Morlocks in HG Wells' story--they didn't stay servants.

Would Neanderthals even have the capacity to be reliable servants?  As Bailey says, we'll never know for sure unless we try.

Interesting....

Half of the world has been searching for other "intelligent life", in hopes that they could learn from them, and half the world has been dreading that it would happen. Just look at our sci-fi with some aliens as being portrayed as harmless friends, and others as ruthless conquerors.

Unfortunately we don't know the "intelligence" of these beings.

If they have the natural intelligence of our greatest scientists, it would be the most wonderful experiment.

If they have the intelligence of a 4 yr old... then we would be essentially creating the race of deltas and gammas that Aldus Huxley dreamed up. And, since we no longer need Huxley's elevator operators, they would soon find themselves in zoos and circuses.

If cloned they would be born into the modern world... and the first few should be educated like our own children. And, I'm sure there would be thousands of volunteers to adopt a Neanderthal infant. And, then based on intelligence and other things, they would be given a choice whether they would wish to live in modern comfort vs a "retro" environment. Even perhaps dropping them off on an island to be left to their own devices.

It is interesting... it is believed that the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens had common ancestors. The Neanderthals migrated to Europe prior to the Homo Sapiens. Then, sometime after the arrival of the Homo Sapiens in Europe, they died out.

It is likely that there would also have been groups of Neanderthals in Africa, or elsewhere that would also have diverged from human development, but also eventually died out or were slaughtered.

Humans have also had a very strong history of racism, slavery, clan warfare, etc. Looking at the strength of reaction of modern humans to other humans of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, languages, etc. It isn't hard to imagine the response that occurred when the first Homo Sapiens migrated to Europe and encountered the Neanderthals.

Of course, we'll probably never know what it was that wiped them out... active warfare, human's indifference to their plight, inability to adapt to environmental changes, or perhaps we simply brought the plague with us (much like was done when Europeans entered the Americas).

Personally, I wouldn't see this as much as righting a wrong as actually encountering a different intelligent being on Earth.

Clifford of OR @ Nov 12, 2009 22:08:08 PM

Pure Supposition

How do we know any of these things. This is all based on supposition, everyone just assuming that it would be this way.

Until it happened you wouldn't know.You say what is normal for us would be absent from their repertoire. You forget that they would be born into an entirely different society but they would learn as they grow just as a normal baby would learn and develop as it grows.What is normal for us would be accepted as normal for them. They would even grow eating the same food as a normal human baby would. Yes, they were inferior but you forget nothing was invented or developed.Yes, i'm a rational person. If we were to clone a monkey, yes, it would grow into a monkey but this is Neanderthal man, the forerunner to modern man. Yes, they didn't socialize in large groups but remember, there wasn't 6 billion people on the planet. Yes, he'd be stockier, more hairy and bent over (not unlike some men you can see today). The big question is "Why would you want to?" What is it you would expect to learn from them? It's not like you're going back in time and seeing them as they were then. More then likely you'd have to feel pity for it because it would be just something more for man to ridicule, a simple sideshow attraction or locked away in it's own little prison. We laugh now at some of our disabled fellow brothers and sisters who we don't consider normal. What a lonely existence for any creature.

Lilykam @ Feb 24, 2009 01:22:07 AM

Servants? Not likely

I think that we would find the differences between Neanderthals and Moderns to be both subtler and more complex than we can imagine. Neanderthals were probably just as smart as we are (their Mousterian tools were just as sophisticated, they ate a wide variety of foods in the Iberian peninsula, and they even dried grass for kindling, which takes planning.) The DNA evidence so far suggests they could probably talk just the way we do.

But some behaviors that are every-day for us are completely absent from their repertoire. We socialize in larger groups... extended family, community, etc. They never did. Our ancestors traded, since they were found with tools made from remote materials. Theirs never were. They kept to their small familier groups.

Were we to ressurect them, we would be faced with a dilemna. They would be our equals in most ways, but evolved to socialize in very different ways. They would neither be appropriate as our servants nor suitable for integration in our societies. It would be a kind of torture to bring them back.

Richard Bethell @ Feb 19, 2009 19:17:04 PM

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Risky Business

Risky Business

Matt Bandyk, a reporter for U.S. News, explores capitalism from where it all begins, with the entrepreneur, whose risk taking and experimentation provide the roots from which the rest of the economy grows. As much courage as it takes to create one's own business, even the entrepreneur needs some help, and this blog will look at news, trends, and practical advice for starting and running a small business.

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