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They're supposed to be extinct

Loss Leader said:
None of your links refute my claim that Neanderthals developed art and jewelry only at the very end of their existence after exposure to Cro Magnons. Your first link actually supports my statement, saying that the art they found dated to the very end of the Neanderthal era. The second link talked about technological innovations in survival strategies, something unrelated to my point.
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Ah, but it isn't entirely unrelated. Art is not a separate entity, it is all part of the culture and intellect of a species. Neanderthals were thought generally unintelligent because there was no evidence of art or technological advancement for most of their existence. The new evidence shows that there was actually significant advancement. Given that it is very likely that our some ideas about their intellect were wrong, other ideas based on these are severely weakened.

As far as I know there isn't evidence of Neaderthal art any earlier. However, I think it is unjustified to claim that this is because they weren't creative enough when it has been shown that they were just as creative as other hominids in other areas.
 
Neanderthals had an average cranial capacity of 1450 cm3; H. sapiens have 1345 cm3 (http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_2.htm); by itself this information brings no light on their culture and intelligence.

Neanderthals may have developed rituals, arts and some "top notch" stone age tools by themselves or copied/adapted/borrowed them from H. sapiens. Even if they did not created these items by themselves, this would not necessarily imply they lacked the skills needed to fully use, comprehend or improve arts, rituals and "advanced" tools. If they could do so, then potentially they could blend within our society. But I still doubt this (at least nowadays) since even within our secularist societies there are still a lot of prejudices around.

If they just copied such items and never fully understood them, well, maybe Neanderthals were P-zombies...
 
Cuddles said:
Ah, but it isn't entirely unrelated. Art is not a separate entity, it is all part of the culture and intellect of a species. Neanderthals were thought generally unintelligent because there was no evidence of art or technological advancement for most of their existence. The new evidence shows that there was actually significant advancement. Given that it is very likely that our some ideas about their intellect were wrong, other ideas based on these are severely weakened.

As far as I know there isn't evidence of Neaderthal art any earlier. However, I think it is unjustified to claim that this is because they weren't creative enough when it has been shown that they were just as creative as other hominids in other areas.
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I don't think I agree with you. I agree without hesitation that Neanderthals were much smarter and adaptable than they've generally been given credit for. They survived at least three entire ice age cycles.

However, art and ornamentation are present in the Cro Magnon record for as long as 77,000 years ago from South Africa traveling all the way to Europe. Neanderthals inhabited Europe for 120,000 years or longer and it was only in the brief overlap with h. sapiens that they started using ornamentation. I think it is a mistake to dismiss this as insignificant.

Perhaps "creativity" isn't a single concept. Plenty of animals get very creative while seeking food or escape from confinement but are relative dullards so long as their basic needs are being met. "Creativity" for purposes other than survival may be the distinguishing feature of our more successful breed of humans.
 
Correa Neto said:
P-zombies...
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What the heck is this term doing outside the R&P section? Have the containment barriers been breached? Did someone break quarantine? Quick everyone over to Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology, I'm afraid it may be too late to save General Skepticism from an infestation. :eek:
 
Oh, its just a "Holistic approach"...:D

Check this out:

Could Neanderthals experencie qualia as we do?:duck:
 
Loss Leader said:
I don't think I agree with you. I agree without hesitation that Neanderthals were much smarter and adaptable than they've generally been given credit for. They survived at least three entire ice age cycles.
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That depends they did not change their tools over that entire period.
 
I'm uncertain as to the effectiveness of cloning extinct species. But being that genetic engineering in general is advancing to affect all types of species, I think it is time for some (r)evolutionary thinking. Instead of bringing back mastadons, saber cats, and even neanderthals we should try and find scientific ways to save current species. Such as the snow leopard, desert elephant, polar bears, and the great apes. I have a practical and (r)evolutionary idea. Firstly it is fairly established that the mentioned animals are in danger of extinction. These animals are endangered for fairly well understood reasons, mostly being habitat loss. What we as humans do now to either save these species or let them die out is up to us.

Here's my idea. Re-engineer their genes to make the above named species smaller. Dog sized. Then we as humans could care for an almost unlimited amount of animals. And breed them. As we do dogs. Think of how many dogs and cats are in North America. Hundreds of millions. Seriously, we could have registered breeding programs, conducted by scientific specialists to ensure the successful continuance of each individual species. I live on the dry side of Oahu and I could well use a herd of tiny red elephants in my backyard.

Anyway, I think we as humans are ready for the challenge.
 
And now for a brief intermission:

Loose means not firmly attached, not tightly fitting. "...Loose money..." or "...loose it's chance..." is not what you intended to say. When someone writes that they're trying to loose weight, it doesn't fail to make me chuckle at the comical implications, but nevertheless, it gets tedious seeing the exact same spelling error everywhere.

Lose means to fail, to get rid of.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programing.
 
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Ethics is some sticky goo, eh?

I guess i wouldn't mind seeing Stellar's sea cow having a comeback...and maybe a few of the ostrich-sized birds of Australia. Both were reputed to be quite delicious and benign.

If we had seen their value as a food source a few hundred years ago, they likely would still be with us.
 
I just had an interesting image of a post human future when people have all been destroyed by a pandemic.

Picture of a group of Asimov style robots at a cyber cafe. The robots are sitting around talking about the possibility of cloning humans, and discussing whether it's ethical because "They're supposed to be extinct".

Robert
 
quarky said:
Ethics is some sticky goo, eh?

I guess i wouldn't mind seeing Stellar's sea cow having a comeback...and maybe a few of the ostrich-sized birds of Australia. Both were reputed to be quite delicious and benign.

If we had seen their value as a food source a few hundred years ago, they likely would still be with us.
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They may have been driven to extinction because humans saw their value as a food source. I think you meant to say we should have seen the potential to eat them with such abandon that it could cause them to vanish.

The passenger pigeon is gone because humans placed great value on it as a food source (and for feeding livestock). Many were killed to feed domestic pigs. The American bison is a similar story but with a better ending. A few remained and the species was saved after strong measures to protect them.
 
Loss Leader said:
I agree that the hunched over, grunting, hairy depiction of Neanderthals is wrong-headed and "racist" in the truest sense. But I cannot find any support for the contention that art and jewelry existed in these people before contact with modern humans 40,000 years ago.
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And being able to "copy" abstract ideas doesn't take some intelligence? Tell you what - buy a puppy, and try to train it by letting it watch you answering nature's call, and carefully measure the results. :)

As for what use such clones would be - well, every species has its own approaches to countering the ills that its environment inflicts on it - that's a result of the much-maligned random nature of evolution. They create random, unique ways of countering them, and that's buried in their genome. Of course, they could be pulled from their directly, but it's likely easier to grow some of the animals and observe what they do. This is a similar bio argument for not killing species wholesale.

Also, they could make a walloping good amusement park.
 
"We shouldn't play God"?

What better example than a Cardinal or a Pope if we were looking for men who played God?
 
Just chiming in on the Neanderthal problem - if they were brought back to life, it would be interesting as all heck to see how theists would classify them. Wasn't there a sci-fi book where a scientist cloned a human ancestor specifically to mock evolution deniers?

On the off chance that for some reason a viable population of Neanderthals was created, even if they were significantly less intelligent than H. sapiens, they might manage to survive as society manages to support the handicapped even if it often does a crappy job. That would raise a whole new host of fascinating ethical problems.

Speaking personally, though, I would love to have a sheltie-sized T. rex running around the place, although that veers more into genetic engineering than straight ahead cloning.
 
Dogdoctor said:
Thanks. I remember that now. I think we learned the same things about dodos. However I think that was wild dodos and commercially raised would be different. In commercial flocks you would eat them at a young enough age that they are tender and the flavor depends to large degree on the diet so it's possible that if they were fed a specific diet they would taste better. Of course it is likely that they are not very efficient at producing meat or eggs from the diet fed.
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As long as you're cloning, why not go ahead and genetically engineer them to taste better? You could just kill two birds with...one....uh oh.

:duck:
 
Why not engineer humans instead?

We should be able to eat tree leaves by now.
 
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