No. Without their culture, community, and absolute freedom to roam the planet and carve a corner for themselves, they would be another zoo/museum curiosity, a biological anomaly paraded before us for pennies.
Even if a sizable population of them were granted full human rights and a habitat, they would forever owe us their existence, and their debt to humans would hang over anything they achieve for themselves in terms of growth and survival. Our future generations will also treat them as an experiment gone awry, should they ever threaten the slightest human interest.
It's hard enough watching dying racial and linguistic minority groups; their last remaining few members made into coursework for "our" undergraduates.
Bringing back a Neanderthal is to kill him twice, after granting him a brief purposeless life for our own edutainment. Let them rest in peace.
If you cloned a Neanderthal, you would get a relatively normal looking person with average human intelligence who would adopt whatever language and culture they grew up in. Their differences due to being a Neanderthal would be more subtle than the variation among individual human beings. They would likely lead a normal life, provided they could escape the inevitable media frenzy and racism.
The question "should we clone a Neanderthal?" is the same as the question "should we use unreliable technology to radically alter the development of a human being just for research purposes?" in which case the answer is undeniably "No".
In his BBC series "British Isles: A Natural History" Alan Titchmarsh was made up to look like a Neanderthal, put on normal clothes and then went for a walk down a busy street - hardly anyone noticed. You can see a picture of him on this page:
I think there is a big difference between trying to restart their civilisation and cloning one. Sure morally it would probably be the wrong thing to do, but there would be a lot to learn from doing it.
I guess it's a fine moral line, if they're considered humans then people probably be against it but the past has shown animals are another class altogether with cloning research.
> Without their culture, community, and absolute freedom to roam the planet and carve a corner for themselves, they would be another zoo/museum curiosity, a biological anomaly paraded before us for pennies.
By this argument, we should destroy all zoos and let the species in them die off. It's counter to all biological knowledge.
> Even if a sizable population of them were granted full human rights and a habitat, they would forever owe us their existence, and their debt to humans would hang over anything they achieve for themselves in terms of growth and survival.
So? How is that different from the debt you owe your parents?
> Our future generations will also treat them as an experiment gone awry, should they ever threaten the slightest human interest.
This happens to minority ethnic groups all the time. Look at the new Arizona immigration law.
> It's hard enough watching dying racial and linguistic minority groups; their last remaining few members made into coursework for "our" undergraduates.
So... trying to understand ourselves is morally wrong? It's horrible to preserve our dying ways as best we know how?
> Bringing back a Neanderthal is to kill him twice, after granting him a brief purposeless life for our own edutainment. Let them rest in peace.
This applies equally to the California condor and the panda. We should just let all endangered species rest in peace, I suppose.
Should we get extinct, I don't want to be the first or the millionth to be cloned to life. I want to come to this world 200k years after the experiment, born naturally into a world where my specie is not the lab-rat of another more intelligent. In a world full of our own inventions, cultures, and languages. I also want a family tree with people whose life stories fill my youthful evenings with pride and curiosity.
After that, I wouldn't mind if there was a pony, and/or an Atari 2600.
I want to come to this world 200k years after the experiment, born naturally into a world where my specie is not the lab-rat of another more intelligent. In a world full of our own inventions, cultures, and languages. I also want a family tree with people whose life stories fill my youthful evenings with pride and curiosity.
Sometimes you have to make personal sacrifices (like being the first to be brought back to life) so that millions or billions after you get a chance.
The 'Noble Savage' myth is the last vestige of racism still taken seriously by educated Westerners. It seems harmless enough, because the stereotype is positive, but it's still an assumption about moral character based on race.
The problem with the Noble Savage myth is that it is a ridiculous romanticization, much akin to the myth of the "simple, merry country folk." The idea in itself doesn't have anything to do with the race of the savages in question.
I hope it will not ever be done. If we ever get to the point where it can be done it probably will.
On the other hand I am all for resurrecting woolly mammoths and other extinct animals. They would not be aware that they are giant and unintelligent historical relics at the mercy of their superior human masters.
Even if a sizable population of them were granted full human rights and a habitat, they would forever owe us their existence, and their debt to humans would hang over anything they achieve for themselves in terms of growth and survival. Our future generations will also treat them as an experiment gone awry, should they ever threaten the slightest human interest.
It's hard enough watching dying racial and linguistic minority groups; their last remaining few members made into coursework for "our" undergraduates.
Bringing back a Neanderthal is to kill him twice, after granting him a brief purposeless life for our own edutainment. Let them rest in peace.