Quote
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/10/scientists-clone-neanderthals/?test=latestnews
Rebuilt DNA Could Lead to Cloned Neanderthals
As scientists come closer to completing a draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome, creating a living person from an ancient DNA sequence is becoming a real possibility, according to Archaeology Magazine.
In 2005, 454 Life Sciences began a project with the Max Planck Institute to sequence the genetic code of a 30,000 year old Neanderthal woman. Now nearly complete, the sequence will let scientists look at the genetic blueprint of humankind's nearest relative, understand its biology and maybe even create a living person.
The work is possible today thanks to vast increases in computing power over the past few years. 454's Thomas Jarvie told the magazine, "Six years ago if you wanted to sequence E. coli... it would have taken one or maybe two million dollars, and it would have taken a year and 150 people. Nowadays, one person can do it in two days."
The restoration of DNA tens of thousands of years old has been challenged by chemical changes, breakdown of the biological matter and contaminants. And once the DNA sequencing is complete, creating a clone from it is still an inexact science.
Some scientists believe that by making changes to the DNA inside a human cell -- thousands or even millions of changes, that is -- the human genome can be altered to match the recreated Neanderthal one. One cell is just a step towards a living creature, but it's a key one.
Advances in stem cell science have led to proposals to alter a stem cell's DNA to match the Neanderthal genome. That stem cell would be left to reproduce, creating a colony of cells that could be programmed to become any type of cell that existed in the Neanderthal's body -- even an entire person. Archaeology cites Robert Lanza, biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology's chief science officer, who notes that species such as cows and goats are now routinely cloned with few problems.
There are many technical obstacles, but it's reasonable to suppose that scientists could soon use that long-extinct genome to safely create a healthy, living Neanderthal clone. But should it be done?
That's the question that inspired author Zach Zorich to dig into the issue. He points out that legal precedents are on the side of Neanderthal human rights, noting that such a creature would deserve human rights.
"I've been following Neanderthal gene research for years, and it started to dawn on me that all of these decades-old academic questions about how Neanderthals were related to modern humans might suddenly have human rights implications," he told FoxNews.com.
"My hope is that the article will get people to think about what it is that makes us human beings so that there is a larger and better informed debate about how our society should proceed with cloning genetics research."
For more on this fascinating story, see Archaeology.org.
OK, Tim.
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights. Morality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
Quotea 30,000 year old Neanderthal woman
Wow. Just wow.
The morales come in with how this kid would be treat. Would it have a free life or be a scientific curiosity and nothing more.
To some extent being a subject of science is unavoidable but would this be able to be kept to a low enough degree that the kid could still be happy?
Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights. Morality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
What would be interesting is a clone of a person from 10-15,000 years ago. Would the person behaviorally be able to cope with civilization, or have we silently evolved since the agricultural revolution to cope with societies more complex than hunter gatherers?
Interesting... more info on how much scientists are finding out via ancient DNA research.
Quote
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/10/dna-suggests-ancient-man-baldness-issues/?test=latestnews
Even Ancient Man Had Baldness Issues
NEW YORK — Scientists have pieced together most of the DNA of a man who lived in Greenland about 4,000 years ago, a pioneering feat that revealed hints about his appearance and even an increased risk of baldness.
It's the first genome from an ancient human, showing the potential for what one expert called a time machine for learning about the biology of ancient people.
Analysis suggests the Greenland man probably had type A-positive blood, brown eyes, darker skin than most Europeans, dry earwax, a boosted chance of going bald and several biological adaptations for weathering a cold climate, researchers report in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.
The DNA also indicated the man had dark, thick hair — a trait the scientists observed directly, since that's where the genetic material came from.
More importantly, comparisons of his DNA with that of present-day Arctic peoples shed light on the mysterious origins of the man's cultural group, the Saqqaq, the earliest known culture to settle in Greenland. Results suggest his ancestors migrated from Siberia some 5,500 years ago.
It's not clear how or why they migrated, said Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, an author of the paper. The analysis shows the now extinct Saqqaq were not direct ancestors of today's Inuits or Native Americans, he said.
The researchers nicknamed the man Inuk, which is Greenlandic for "human" or "man."
The DNA was recovered from a tuft of hair that had been excavated in 1986 from permafrost on Greenland's west coast, north of the Arctic Circle. The thousands of years in a deep freeze was key to preserving the genetic material. But most ancient human remains come from warmer places with less potential for preservation, and scientists said it's not clear how often DNA from such samples would allow for constructing a genome.
Willerslev said he believes many hair samples from around the world, perhaps from South American mummies or in collections, probably would be usable.
"I won't say it will become routine," he told reporters, but "I think it will be something we will see much more in the coming five years."
Over the past few years, scientists have reconstructed at least draft versions of genomes of other species from much older DNA. One used woolly mammoth DNA from about 18,000 years ago and 58,000 years ago, and a draft Neanderthal genome unveiled last year used 40,000-year-old DNA from three individuals.
For the new paper, the researchers identified particular markers in the man's DNA, and then turned to studies of modern-day people that have associated those markers with particular traits like eye color, blood type, and tendency toward baldness.
As scientists link more and more markers to biological traits in modern people, they will be able to apply those findings to learn more about the Greenland man, said Eddy Rubin of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
"It's sort of a time machine," said Rubin, who studies Neanderthal DNA but was not connected to the new work. While the DNA-based picture is not definitive, it's a "pretty good guess," he said.
"I think it's a very important study," Rubin said. "We're really beginning to zoom in on physical characteristics of individuals which we'll never see."
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 03:47:02 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights. Morality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
What would be interesting is a clone of a person from 10-15,000 years ago. Would the person behaviorally be able to cope with civilization, or have we silently evolved since the agricultural revolution to cope with societies more complex than hunter gatherers?
1) Homo Neanderthalis is NOT our ancestor. The last common ancestor we have with them is during one of the Erectus emigrations from Africa or Heidelbergensis, this places our last common ancestor around 300 to 600 thousand years ago.
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Neanderthalis separates from us about 1/20th of the distance between us and Afarensis (Lucy) and seems to be significantly different from us not only culturally but also in the brain functions that allow cultural adaptation (since we lived in contact for about 50 thousand years in europe before they went extinct), they did not learn from us, they did not adopt culture or technology from Sapiens. They kept their own technology unchanged throughout their existence.
If we did clone one I suspect he or she (not it) would appear to us to be a heavy set mentally handicapped stable and capable of simple tasks person. He or she would learn language and would being able to do what he or she were taught, but might not be able to understand the concepts "red" or "hope".
I'm a stable person myself.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human.
How do you know that?
Without getting into all the behavioral changes that may have occured, just the genetic changes regarding disease will mean any person with DNA from 10,000 years ago is probably going to croak fairly quickly.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
If we did clone one I suspect he or she (not it) would appear to us to be a heavy set mentally handicapped stable and capable of simple tasks person. He or she would learn language and would being able to do what he or she were taught, but might not be able to understand the concepts "red" or "hope".
Then what's the point? We already have enough Icelanders as it is.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 04:13:06 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human.
How do you know that?
Without getting into all the behavioral changes that may have occured, just the genetic changes regarding disease will mean any person with DNA from 10,000 years ago is probably going to croak fairly quickly.
I don't know that. The scientific consensus does suppose that, with good reason of course. Thats why I used the word should. The reason we consider all 200,000 years of humans to be humans are the consistency of the traits identifying the species, these include brain architecture.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights.
I don't believe you will find any evidence that this is true. If it were to go to a court of law, I would bet on the requirement being that the species be homo sapiens, and that other species within the genus homo would qualify only on a case-by-case basis (though, of course, it is entirely unclear as to whether Neanderthal is of the species homo sapiens or not).
QuoteMorality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
I think that, morally, the motives for creating such a being would determine whether it is the right thing to do or not. Simply creating a person (or potential person) for the sake of curiosity wouldn't be moral even if the child were as mentally and physically adept as any other person.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Cultural norms are not evolutionary, but the ability to work in large groups surely is. I mean there are reasons why some animals are social, and others aren't. Alfreds clone may not have the capacity to effectively co-exist in a larger group.
The definition of Homo is found by inferring certain mental traits from produced artefacts combined with a Homonid body. Yes, we might be separated by 18 thousand generations but still scientifically we are all homo. Regardless that courts are hearing cases where Pan Troglodytes (chimps for you creationist science haters) is argued as having human rights, what a court says is irrelevant to morality and ethics. It is merely relevant to the law. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/01/austria.animalwelfare (I'd link to the nature article if you could read it).
Regarding morality and pregnancy, I suppose with your standards any of the real reasons people get pregnant would also be immoral. Acts that can be undone are held to different standards to acts that cannot be undone in all cases. A mentally capable (in the sense of being capable of functioning in modern society) person could leave the wacko scientists that created him/her and conceivably move on to create a life for himself, a mentally non-capable person could not.
H. Neandertalis might fall into the cracks between being not capable of human deeds and still having human rights. If such a person is the likely result of such cloning it should not be done, go clone a dire wolf, terror bird of a mastodon instead, I have no problems with that.
Quote from: HVC on February 10, 2010, 04:27:21 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Cultural norms are not evolutionary, but the ability to work in large groups surely is. I mean there are reasons why some animals are social, and others aren't. Alfreds clone may not have the capacity to effectively co-exist in a larger group.
Cultural norms are not biological. We have clearly genetically modern Homo Sapiens living stone age hunter gatherer lives in tribes all over the world. They do not have the cultural baggage to deal with the modern world. They have the same brain and neurons we have, but they have different culture. Cultural evolution is the transmission of slightly modified ideas from generation to generation. Richard Dawkins (when he was still a research scientist) named such ideas memes.
A less than modern Homo Sapiens, if raised by modern Homo Sapiens in a modern society would have the culture of that moderns society and not be more deficient in being able to adopt the modern culture and it's norms than many modern homo sapiens. Or, this, at least, is what Anthropologists agree is most likely the case.
I wouldn't presume to know more then anthropologists, but I can see where older man wouldn't have the genes to interact in large groups. As an example cats, who have been domesticated for about 9000 years, are social creatures. Even feral cats form colonies. But wildcat, the domestic cats forbearer, is purely solitary and I doubt very much that it react well to being placed in a social environment (feline, human, or other).
Quote from: HVC on February 10, 2010, 05:03:27 PM
I wouldn't presume to know more then anthropologists, but I can see where older man wouldn't have the genes to interact in large groups. As an example cats, who have been domesticated for about 9000 years, are social creatures. Even feral cats form colonies. But wildcat, the domestic cats forbearer, is purely solitary and I doubt very much that it react well to being placed in a social environment (feline, human, or other).
I don't know about cats, but wild foxes were domesticated within 50 years under scientifically observed conditions, selecting for behavioural characteristics trying to breed a more friendly fur fox.
http://cbsu.tc.cornell.edu/ccgr/behaviour/Index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
http://8e.devbio.com/article.php?id=223
Social animals are easier to domesticate and herd (goats, cattle, sheep and dogs) while some kinds of animals could have been "domesticated" by means of toleration (pigs living off our leftovers, cats eating the rats and mice stealing our food).
Dogs were probably domesticated very quickly from wolves (a few hundred years) as the link to the russian foxes above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog
But, regardless, we need to be concious of the difference between ability to be social, the ability to social back and the willingness to be both.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:23:25 PM
I don't know that. The scientific consensus does suppose that, with good reason of course. Thats why I used the word should. The reason we consider all 200,000 years of humans to be humans are the consistency of the traits identifying the species, these include brain architecture.
There isn't a scientific consensus. There are some scientists who believe evolution has accelerated the last 10,000 years, and those that believe it has not been a major factor.
Language is a great example. There is a lot of thought that we are predisposed to learn languages at a young age, but then there is not a consensus that homo sapiens evolved with language skills in place. That certainly opens the possibility of critical evolution happening after the species was established. We also know that over the last 10,000 years there was significant evolution regarding disease resistance. Skin color has also differentiated. I don't think you can definatively say that significant changes haven't taken place.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 03:47:02 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights. Morality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
What would be interesting is a clone of a person from 10-15,000 years ago. Would the person behaviorally be able to cope with civilization, or have we silently evolved since the agricultural revolution to cope with societies more complex than hunter gatherers?
1) Homo Neanderthalis is NOT our ancestor. The last common ancestor we have with them is during one of the Erectus emigrations from Africa or Heidelbergensis, this places our last common ancestor around 300 to 600 thousand years ago.
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Neanderthalis separates from us about 1/20th of the distance between us and Afarensis (Lucy) and seems to be significantly different from us not only culturally but also in the brain functions that allow cultural adaptation (since we lived in contact for about 50 thousand years in europe before they went extinct), they did not learn from us, they did not adopt culture or technology from Sapiens. They kept their own technology unchanged throughout their existence.
If we did clone one I suspect he or she (not it) would appear to us to be a heavy set mentally handicapped stable and capable of simple tasks person. He or she would learn language and would being able to do what he or she were taught, but might not be able to understand the concepts "red" or "hope".
A lot of this is out of date due to research in the last 10 years, I'll post on this in detail once I get to work.
Viking, you should check out this book:
http://www.amazon.com/000-Year-Explosion-Civilization-Accelerated/dp/0465002218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&sr=8-1
QuoteEditorial Reviews - The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution
From Publishers Weekly
Arguing that human genetic evolution is still ongoing, physicist-turned-evolutionary biologist Cochran and anthropologist Harpending marshal evidence for dramatic genetic change in the (geologically) recent past, particularly since the invention of agriculture. Unfortunately, much of their argument-including the origin of modern humans, agriculture, and Indo-Europeans-tends to neglect archaeological and geological evidence; readers should keep in mind that assumed time frames, like the age of the human species, are minimums at best and serious underestimates at worst. That said, there is much here to recommend, including the authors' unique approach to the question of modern human-Neanderthal interbreeding, and their discussion of the genetic pressures on Ashkenazi Jews over the past 1,000 years, both based solidly in fact. They also provide clear explanations for tricky concepts like gene flow and haplotypes, and their arguments are intriguing throughout. Though lapses in their case won't be obvious to the untrained eye, it's clear that this lively, informative text is not meant to deceive (abundant references and a glossary also help) but to provoke thought, debate and possibly wonder.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Cochran and Harpending dispute the late Stephen Jay Gould's assertion that civilization was "built with the same body and brain" Homo sapiens has had for 40,000 years. Humanity has been evolving very dramatically for the last 10,000 years, they say, spurred by the very civilizational forces launched by that evolution. They initially retreat, however, to Gould's 40,000-year benchmark to consider how H. sapiens replaced H. neanderthalensis and to argue for genetic mixing such that modern humans got from Neanderthals the innovative capacity for civilization. Later, agricultural life created problems necessitating adaptations, most importantly to disease and diet, that persist to this day among inheritors of the populations that made them. Lighter skin and eye color arose from other genetic reactions to environmental challenges, and less immediately obvious changes further discriminated discrete populations, as recently as late-eighteenth-century Ashkenazi Jews, among whom intelligence burgeoned in, Cochran and Harpending contend, adaptive response to social pressure. A most intriguing deposition, without a trace of ethnic or racial advocacy, though directed against the proposition that "we're all the same." --Ray Olson
Cloned Neanderthals?
Isn't offering football scholarships easier?
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:51:27 PM
Quote from: HVC on February 10, 2010, 04:27:21 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Cultural norms are not evolutionary, but the ability to work in large groups surely is. I mean there are reasons why some animals are social, and others aren't. Alfreds clone may not have the capacity to effectively co-exist in a larger group.
Cultural norms are not biological. We have clearly genetically modern Homo Sapiens living stone age hunter gatherer lives in tribes all over the world. They do not have the cultural baggage to deal with the modern world. They have the same brain and neurons we have, but they have different culture. Cultural evolution is the transmission of slightly modified ideas from generation to generation. Richard Dawkins (when he was still a research scientist) named such ideas memes.
A less than modern Homo Sapiens, if raised by modern Homo Sapiens in a modern society would have the culture of that moderns society and not be more deficient in being able to adopt the modern culture and it's norms than many modern homo sapiens. Or, this, at least, is what Anthropologists agree is most likely the case.
Well for a long time anthropologists have believed that there was a cultural explosion around 50,000 years ago and that there must have been some kind of change in the brain that accounted for the appearance of art and other evidence of symbolic thought.
However there have been recent discoveries of art that's older than that, but it's unclear whether these are merely isolated cases or our discoveries have been limited by age and the fragility of most kinds of art.
I am aware of the idea of accelerated human evolution during the past 10,000 years. I don't disagree or have any issue with that. I suspect that if we clearly state our understanding of the facts we'll find out we are agreeing. So to the clarification.
I used the phrase "less than modern homo sapiens" in the sense of "earlier than modern", I did this for a reason. I was not comparing "early" or "middle" or "ancient". I was suggesting that the homo sapiens from before civilisation are the same as the homo sapiens after civilisation. Naturally disease and changed life habits will change immune and body shape. We had been talking about mental capabilities and that was the change (or lack of change) I was referring to. We don't see modern hunter gatherer societies full of retards or stupid people or socially inept people. These are groups who have separated off from the main genetic stem of humanity as long ago as 40,000 years ago (for the australian aboriginies). This is at least 30,000 years before the first proposed agricultural societies.
I like the way that the review alfred russel includes the phrase "Though lapses in their case won't be obivous to the untrained eye....". That is correct, there is a scientific debate going on about this issue. I hope you have noticed the qualifiers I have been using throughout this thread.
Pre-Modern (now I'm talking about modern society, rather than modern homo sapiens) agricultural societies probably had a very intense selective pressure. New diseases, war and new forms of selection (think ghengis kahn and his decendents) probably had a great effect. So there has been change. These are the changes that they suggest.
We were talking about mental capability. Has there been a change in mental capability from pre-modern homo sapiens to us? We don't have solid evidence for that. If there is a change is that change genetic? We don't have evidence for that. What evidence we do have for mental capability, the skulls of pre-modern and the artifacts of pre-modern homo sapiens, does not suggest nor support any assertion that they were less mentally capable that we are.
Real changes did happen including immunity to disease, weeding out of traits inconsistent with civilisation (the ones needed for hunting and fighting) and other changes.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 10, 2010, 06:19:35 PM
Well for a long time anthropologists have believed that there was a cultural explosion around 50,000 years ago and that there must have been some kind of change in the brain that accounted for the appearance of art and other evidence of symbolic thought.
However there have been recent discoveries of art that's older than that, but it's unclear whether these are merely isolated cases or our discoveries have been limited by age and the fragility of most kinds of art.
I agree. The clearest trait separating Homo Sapiens from previous Homo is the constant change in tools, weapons and art. I'm not going to propose a date for the beginning of cultural evolution, but just point out that Homo Sapiens culture changes, the culture of the other Homo doesn't.
I think we should clone a Neanderthal chick. AFAIK they always had huge cans. :cool:
Viking--I'm just contesting the idea that there is a scientific consensus. Some of the few characteristics we can trace the past 10,000 years we know have changed. Although humans have been separated for extended periods, the only large group without knowledge of agriculture is the australian aborigines, and a couple centuries beyond first contact I don't know what they prove, if anything.
If there were genetically based behavoral (or other types of mental) changes, I don't know why you would expect to see them in skulls--we don't see a skull change with increased language capability, for example.
http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/ (http://www.lycaeum.org/%7Esputnik/McKenna/Evolution/) (there's many good links here)
QuoteTerence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution
Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna's fascinating theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and human culture.
To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.
McKenna's theory has great appeal and intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history. In addition, because McKenna (who describes himself as "an explorer, not a scientist") is also a proponent of much wilder suppositions, such as his "Timewave Zero" theory, his more reasonable theories are usually disregarded by the very scientists whose informed criticism is crucial for their development.
This page links to resources that should help to fill in some of the gaps with data from the sciences and with other theories and myths about human origins.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 06:55:42 PM
Viking--I'm just contesting the idea that there is a scientific consensus. Some of the few characteristics we can trace the past 10,000 years we know have changed. Although humans have been separated for extended periods, the only large group without knowledge of agriculture is the australian aborigines, and a couple centuries beyond first contact I don't know what they prove, if anything.
If there were genetically based behavoral (or other types of mental) changes, I don't know why you would expect to see them in skulls--we don't see a skull change with increased language capability, for example.
There was a consensus, now there are new ideas being introduced. These Ideas are being studied, they have not yet been disproved and they may not be. I agree with that.
As to the Aboriginies, what do they prove. Well, to get back on point, they show that Homo Sapiens, separated from the rest of the species genetically for 40,000 years have the same mental capabilites as the other Homo Sapiens. Their level (as a group) of intelligence (or other measurable mental qualities) is not substantially different from the rest of the groups of humanity. You can take an aboriginie and raise him as a "white man" and get a person with the same culture and capabilites as you would expect from a "white man" raised in the same manner.
This is not thought to be the case with a Neanderthal. There is consensus on that. That was my point. You can adopt a kid from a Sapiens stone age culture at birth and raise that kid to be a modern sapiens. You can not do the same with a Neanderthal. That difference and my view that cloned Homo Neanderthalis would still be human recieving all human rights and citizenship of whatever nation he/she was born in has consequences for my view of the morality and the ethicalness (is that a word?) of the cloning. Do not bring a Neanderthal to life unless you are sure can treat him/her like a human.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 07:23:25 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 06:55:42 PM
Viking--I'm just contesting the idea that there is a scientific consensus. Some of the few characteristics we can trace the past 10,000 years we know have changed. Although humans have been separated for extended periods, the only large group without knowledge of agriculture is the australian aborigines, and a couple centuries beyond first contact I don't know what they prove, if anything.
If there were genetically based behavoral (or other types of mental) changes, I don't know why you would expect to see them in skulls--we don't see a skull change with increased language capability, for example.
There was a consensus, now there are new ideas being introduced. These Ideas are being studied, they have not yet been disproved and they may not be. I agree with that.
As to the Aboriginies, what do they prove. Well, to get back on point, they show that Homo Sapiens, separated from the rest of the species genetically for 40,000 years have the same mental capabilites as the other Homo Sapiens. Their level (as a group) of intelligence (or other measurable mental qualities) is not substantially different from the rest of the groups of humanity. You can take an aboriginie and raise him as a "white man" and get a person with the same culture and capabilites as you would expect from a "white man" raised in the same manner.
You are more hung up on the mental capabilities, I was interested in everything else. And at the end of the day, aboriginal groups die younger and have more social problems. I'd never say that is because they are genetically different--there are clearly a lot of cultural factors at work--but they aren't proof that differences haven't emerged.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 04:02:04 PM
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 03:47:02 PM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights. Morality on this issue, I think, should be determined by whether the person would be capable of being human. If the Neanderthal would be a mere curiosity or "programmed" to fail then creating this person would be unethical.
What would be interesting is a clone of a person from 10-15,000 years ago. Would the person behaviorally be able to cope with civilization, or have we silently evolved since the agricultural revolution to cope with societies more complex than hunter gatherers?
1) Homo Neanderthalis is NOT our ancestor. The last common ancestor we have with them is during one of the Erectus emigrations from Africa or Heidelbergensis, this places our last common ancestor around 300 to 600 thousand years ago.
2) Cultural evolution. It is not genetic or morphological. It is cultural. We should be able to take a Homo Sapiens from most of the period of the speicies and raise it as a modern human. Neanderthal is different both genetically and morphologically.
Neanderthalis separates from us about 1/20th of the distance between us and Afarensis (Lucy) and seems to be significantly different from us not only culturally but also in the brain functions that allow cultural adaptation (since we lived in contact for about 50 thousand years in europe before they went extinct), they did not learn from us, they did not adopt culture or technology from Sapiens. They kept their own technology unchanged throughout their existence.
If we did clone one I suspect he or she (not it) would appear to us to be a heavy set mentally handicapped stable and capable of simple tasks person. He or she would learn language and would being able to do what he or she were taught, but might not be able to understand the concepts "red" or "hope".
Internet wasn't working at school, so this is a bit late and abbreviated. Lots of the topics I mention can be found at the following blog.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog
While it's true that modern man has not descended from Neanderthal man, that does not mean they have had no influence on our genepool. It would be extremely unusual for there to have been no incidents of cross species mating between such closely related species. If offspring result and they are fertile, you only need one that carries a beneficial gene that's passed on to significantly effect a species. There has been some evidence of intergression of genes between the Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. The release of the entire genome will provide a lot of evidence for or against.
#2 is totally wrong and has been known to be wrong for decades. The Châtelperronian culture was a radical advancement from the Neanderthal's previous Mousterian culture (though not as advanced as the Cro Magnon culture) , and has universally been viewed as a reaction to the migration of Homo Sapiens into Neanderthal territory. Moreover recent research has indicated that the lack of symbolic thought that has traditionally been ascribed to Neanderthals as been false.
First of all, they had the Fox2P gene which indicates they had the ability to speak. Secondly, I just posted this week on a discovery of Neanderthal art that's 50,000 years old, and thus an indigenous development, not a reaction/copying of Cro Magnon culture. There have also been more recent discoveries of art and musical instruments for the Neanderthals from the period of interaction of with Cro Magnons. How much of this is due to a result of learning from the new comers is unknown. Homo Sapiens didn't produce much art either before this era, yet it is assumed that we taught the Neanderthals.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 06:55:42 PM
Viking--I'm just contesting the idea that there is a scientific consensus. Some of the few characteristics we can trace the past 10,000 years we know have changed. Although humans have been separated for extended periods, the only large group without knowledge of agriculture is the australian aborigines, and a couple centuries beyond first contact I don't know what they prove, if anything.
If there were genetically based behavoral (or other types of mental) changes, I don't know why you would expect to see them in skulls--we don't see a skull change with increased language capability, for example.
Not exactly true, the Broca area of the brain is on the surface and thus leaves an impression on the skull. It has been claimed that H. habilis had a Broca area more advanced than that of an ape.
Precis of Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition
http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.donald.html (http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.donald.html)
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 07:48:37 PM
You are more hung up on the mental capabilities, I was interested in everything else. And at the end of the day, aboriginal groups die younger and have more social problems. I'd never say that is because they are genetically different--there are clearly a lot of cultural factors at work--but they aren't proof that differences haven't emerged.
The reason I am hung up on the mental capabilities is that this discussion started when I opined that cloning a Neanderthal that would not be able to survive without constant institutional support despite being raised in a modern culture was unethical. And as a consequence you'd have to make the case that Neanderthals could survive in a modern culture as a full equal member. The reason I demand this standard is that I would consider a Neanderthal to have human and citizen rights and could not ethically be born without at least a probability of being have to benefit from them.
Then I argued that they might not be able to operate as a full member of society, suggesting that a Neanderthal might not be able to operate his/her brain in the same way we do. This is not a controversial idea and until recently was the scientific consensus. Now there is a lot of evidence mitigating the difference, much of it recently discovered/analysed. Those guys in Germany looking at their DNA, the 10k y.o. apparently Neanderthal like girl they found in Portugal, the identification of previously supposed Cro-Magnon sites as Neanderthal.
Timmy has in a nuanced manner pointed out that there was some copying of artifacts and some changes in Neanderthal culture. They are for the most part exceptions. Compared to Cro-Magnon they learned very little and they changed very little. However, the point I was trying to make is that Neanderthals did this very little compared to Cro-Magnon.
Agreed. All serious scientific data and theory we have today shows that Aborigines are fully equal Homo Sapiens. You just dismiss that by saying that the differences haven't yet emerged. You can't do that.
I'll admit that the Aborigine example sort of opens you to an accusation of racism by disagreeing with me, but then again, that is probably why I used it ;)
QuoteTimmy has in a nuanced manner
I don't think this has been ever said on Languish before! :w00t:
On a serious note, I think you're undervaluing the advances of the Châtelperronian culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2telperronian
Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 10, 2010, 09:56:58 PM
QuoteTimmy has in a nuanced manner
I don't think this has been ever said on Languish before! :w00t:
On a serious note, I think you're undervaluing the advances of the Châtelperronian culture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2telperronian
Quite possibly, confirmation bias and anthropocentrism and all that. That and how the culture was the last gasp of Neanderthals in France and the argument that the new type artifacts have Cro-Magnon influence makes it easier to dismiss, for those who want to dismiss it.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 07:48:37 PM
You are more hung up on the mental capabilities, I was interested in everything else. And at the end of the day, aboriginal groups die younger and have more social problems. I'd never say that is because they are genetically different--there are clearly a lot of cultural factors at work--but they aren't proof that differences haven't emerged.
I would say genetic differences do account for some aboriginal social problems. Take alcoholism for example. Agricultural societies have been drinking alcohol for a very long time. And for quite some time alcoholic drinks were preferred over water due to their anti-bacterial properties meaning it did not spread water-borne diseases (like cholera, for example, but also many others). Economic historians have estimated that a third of medieval European grain yields went to the production of beer, if I recall correctly. Now, not being able of handling alcohol can be devastating in modern society - and it was even worse when competition was fiercer and there were no social security nets. It is quite probable agricultural societies with a tradition of alcohol-drinking have evolved towards tolerance of alcohol. A tolerance lacked by peoples with no tradition of drinking alcohol. Australian aboriginals are known for their alcoholism, and so are arctic inuits on the other side of the world. I remember when Cathy Freeman lit the olympic flame at Sydney. She said it was a great day for her - especially since her brother had actually kept himself sober for once.
Hey Pat, the fact that aboriginal societies on opposite sides of the world with absolutely no genetic ties for tens of thousands of years, and yet share very similar social histories, and both have alcohol issues would tend to suggest that alcoholism is NOT genetic, but cultural.
There's absolutely no evidence that alcoholism in aboriginal groups has any genetic source.
Only peoples with a history of drinking alcohol would be able to develop tolerance for alcohol, obviously. Which is to say all peoples without such a history have similar evolutionary histories in that they have not been drinking alcohol and have not had a chance of developing such a tolerance. There are many more examples of this phenomenon. There might not be any hard evidence for it, presently, but I still think that's the way it is. It'd make a lot of sense.
Quote from: Barrister on February 10, 2010, 11:36:16 PM
Hey Pat, the fact that aboriginal societies on opposite sides of the world with absolutely no genetic ties for tens of thousands of years, and yet share very similar social histories, and both have alcohol issues would tend to suggest that alcoholism is NOT genetic, but cultural.
There's absolutely no evidence that alcoholism in aboriginal groups has any genetic source.
Totally disagree. A population only adapts to handle a poison if they're exposed to it. Since neither the Inuit nor the Aborigines were exposed to alcohol until the Europeans arrived their lack of tolerance is to be expected. They both represent the base line human genome in that regard.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 10, 2010, 03:47:02 PM
What would be interesting is a clone of a person from 10-15,000 years ago. Would the person behaviorally be able to cope with civilization, or have we silently evolved since the agricultural revolution to cope with societies more complex than hunter gatherers?
Some difficulty with digesting milk and wheat products, possibly some difficulty reading, but I'm willing to bet that people from the period are as or more intelligent than the average human being; selection would be less about surviving diseases than intelligence and physical attributes.
Quote from: Pat on February 11, 2010, 12:08:33 AM
Only peoples with a history of drinking alcohol would be able to develop tolerance for alcohol, obviously.
Asians have been drinking forever, and they still get red-faced and pass out very, very quickly. I call BS.
Quote
You are more hung up on the mental capabilities, I was interested in everything else. And at the end of the day, aboriginal groups die younger and have more social problems. I'd never say that is because they are genetically different--there are clearly a lot of cultural factors at work--but they aren't proof that differences haven't emerged.
How much of immunity to disease is genetic and how much of it is in utero and childhood development?
Quote from: Queequeg on February 11, 2010, 06:34:41 AM
Quote from: Pat on February 11, 2010, 12:08:33 AM
Only peoples with a history of drinking alcohol would be able to develop tolerance for alcohol, obviously.
Asians have been drinking forever, and they still get red-faced and pass out very, very quickly. I call BS.
development?
They get red faced but they certainly don't pass out quickly.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 09:53:58 PM
Agreed. All serious scientific data and theory we have today shows that Aborigines are fully equal Homo Sapiens. You just dismiss that by saying that the differences haven't yet emerged. You can't do that.
In no way have I ever argued otherwise. All I did was express curiousity as to whether there have been changes. Maybe a better way of framing things would be: If you gave modern infants from Europe to hunter gatherer societies to raise, would they be as suited to their environment as the hunter gatherer's own children? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.
Quote from: alfred russel on February 11, 2010, 08:27:03 AM
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 09:53:58 PM
Agreed. All serious scientific data and theory we have today shows that Aborigines are fully equal Homo Sapiens. You just dismiss that by saying that the differences haven't yet emerged. You can't do that.
In no way have I ever argued otherwise. All I did was express curiousity as to whether there have been changes. Maybe a better way of framing things would be: If you gave modern infants from Europe to hunter gatherer societies to raise, would they be as suited to their environment as the hunter gatherer's own children? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know.
The teeth of modern man as well as bone strength are significantly smaller/weaker than that of our ancestors. However, the bone strength issue is pretty much a nurture issue, if they're brought up from infancy in a hunter gathering enviornment they'll be just as strong (assuming they survive to adult hood).
Here's the original article, which is much more interesting in my opinion.
http://www.archaeology.org/1003/etc/neanderthals.html
QuoteShould We Clone Neanderthals?
Volume 63 Number 2, March/April 2010
by Zach Zorich
The scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles
If Neanderthals ever walk the earth again, the primordial ooze from which they will rise is an emulsion of oil, water, and DNA capture beads engineered in the laboratory of 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Connecticut. Over the past 4 years those beads have been gathering tiny fragments of DNA from samples of dissolved organic materials, including pieces of Neanderthal bone. Genetic sequences have given paleoanthropologists a new line of evidence for testing ideas about the biology of our closest extinct relative.
The first studies of Neanderthal DNA focused on the genetic sequences of mitochondria, the microscopic organelles that convert food to energy within cells. In 2005, however, 454 began a collaborative project with the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, to sequence the full genetic code of a Neanderthal woman who died in Croatia's Vindija cave 30,000 years ago. As the Neanderthal genome is painstakingly sequenced, the archaeologists and biologists who study it will be faced with an opportunity that seemed like science fiction just 10 years ago. They will be able to look at the genetic blueprint of humankind's nearest relative and understand its biology as intimately as our own.
In addition to giving scientists the ability to answer questions about Neanderthals' relationship to our own species--did we interbreed, are we separate species, who was smarter--the Neanderthal genome may be useful in researching medical treatments. Newly developed techniques could make cloning Neanderthal cells or body parts a reality within a few years. The ability to use the genes of extinct hominins is going to force the field of paleoanthropology into some unfamiliar ethical territory. There are still technical obstacles, but soon it could be possible to use that long-extinct genome to safely create a healthy, living Neanderthal clone. Should it be done?
At the 454 Life Sciences offices, Gerald Irzyk, Jason Affourtit, and Thomas Jarvie explain the process they use to read the chemicals that made up Neanderthal DNA and the genes that determined a large part of their biology. DNA has a shape, called a double helix, that makes it look like a twisted ladder. Each rung on the ladder is called a base-pair. The rungs are made up of a pair of chemicals called nucleotides--adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine, which are usually referred to by their first initials. The sequence of the nucleotides in the DNA determines what genes an organism has and how they function.
Although most of the Neanderthal genome sequencing is now being done by the San Diego-based company Illumina, the Max Planck Institute initially chose 454 because it had come up with a way to read hundreds of thousands of DNA sequences at a time. Genome-sequencing technology is advancing at a rate comparable to computer processing power. "Six years ago if you wanted to sequence E. coli [a species of bacteria], which is about 4 million base-pairs in length, it would have taken one or maybe two million dollars, and it would have taken a year and 150 people," says Jarvie. "Nowadays, one person can do it in two days and it would cost a few hundred dollars."
Putting the fragments themselves in order can be a little tricky. "At first glance, it's just this completely random assemblage of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs," says Irzyk. "But it turns out there are patterns and motifs, and sometimes these are very specific to a group of organisms." For the Neanderthal sample, the human and chimpanzee genomes were used as references for checking the sequence.
Working with ancient DNA can be much more problematic than sequencing genetic material from living species. Within hours of death, cells begin to break down in a process called apoptosis. The dying cells release enzymes that chop up DNA into tiny pieces. In a human cell, this means that the entire three-billion-base-pair genome is reduced to fragments a few hundred base-pairs long or shorter. The DNA also goes through chemical changes that alter the nucleotides as it ages--C changes into T, and G turns into A--which can cause the gene sequence to be interpreted incorrectly. In the case of the Neanderthal sample, somewhere between 90 and 99 percent of the DNA came from bacteria and other contaminants that had found their way into the bone as it sat in the ground and in storage. The contaminant DNA has to be identified and eliminated. Given the similarity between Neanderthal and modern human DNA, this can be especially difficult when the contamination comes from the people who excavated or analyzed the bone.
According to Stephan Schuster, a geneticist at the Pennsylvania State University, the first draft of the Neanderthal genome is likely to contain many errors. He estimates that getting a completely accurate DNA sequence will require taking five separate samples from the same individual, and sequencing that genome 30 times.
Schuster sequenced the mammoth genome in 2007, and that approach might work for large animals, but taking five samples from a single Neanderthal would require the destruction of a large amount of valuable bone. Carles Lalueza-Fox, a paleogeneticist at Spain's University of Barcelona, believes the accuracy of the DNA could be checked by resequencing dozens or hundreds of times the areas of the Neanderthal genome that seem likely to have errors.
Cloning a Neanderthal will take a lot more than just an accurately reconstructed genome. Artificially assembling an exact copy of the Neanderthal DNA sequence could be done easily and cheaply with current technology, but a free-floating strand of DNA isn't much good to a cell. "The bigger challenge is--how do you assemble a genome without a cell?" asks James Noonan, a geneticist at Yale University. "How do you package DNA into chromosomes, and get that into a nucleus? We don't know how to do that." The shape of the DNA within the chromosomes affects the way that genes interact with chemicals inside the cell. Those interactions control when, how much, and what types of proteins a cell's DNA produces. Those proteins are the building blocks of an organism, so the way a genome expresses itself is as important as the DNA. According to Schuster and Lalueza-Fox, the cellular damage that occurs after death makes it impossible to understand Neanderthal gene expression. This could mean that making a clone identical to someone who lived 30,000 years ago is impossible.
One way to get around the problems of working with an artificial genome would be to alter the DNA inside a living cell. This kind of genetic engineering can already be done, but very few changes can be made at one time. To clone a Neanderthal, thousands or possibly millions of changes would have to be made to a human cell's DNA. George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is part of a research team that is developing a technique to make hundreds of alterations to a genome at the same time. The technique, multiplex automated genome engineering (MAGE), uses short strands of DNA called oligonucleotides to insert pieces of artificial genetic material into a cell's genome at specifically targeted sites. MAGE has been used successfully to make 24 alterations to the genomes of bacteria, mice, and, more recently, human cells. Church estimates that it would take about 10 million changes to make a modern human genome match the Neanderthal genome. Accomplishing this would be a matter of drastically scaling up the technique.
Church believes the place to start with Neanderthal cloning is on the cellular level, creating liver, pancreas, or brain cells. "You can't really tell anything from just looking at the gene sequence," he says. "It's hard to predict physical traits; you have to test them in living cells." Neanderthal cells could be important for discovering treatments to diseases that are largely human-specific, such as HIV, polio, and smallpox, he says. If Neanderthals are sufficiently different from modern humans, they may have a genetic immunity to these diseases. There may also be differences in their biology that lead to new drugs or gene therapy treatments.
So far, efforts to revive extinct species using cloning have a dismal track record. On January 6, 2000, a violent storm in northern Spain caused a tree branch to fall on Celia, the last Pyrenean Ibex, crushing her skull. That would seem like a clear indication that the ibex's evolutionary luck had run out, but a tissue sample taken from Celia's ear provided DNA that a team of Spanish scientists used to reconstruct 439 eggs. Only 57 developed into embryos, 52 did not survive the full term of the pregnancy, four were stillborn, and the one clone that survived birth died of lung failure within hours of delivery.
The ibex clones were created using techniques pioneered by Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology company in Worcester, Massachusetts. The technique, called nuclear transfer, involves removing the nucleus, the part containing the cell's genetic material, of a donor egg cell and replacing it with a nucleus containing clone DNA. In the ibex's case, goat eggs were used because the species are closely related and goats have been successfully cloned many times, explains Robert Lanza, ACT's chief scientific officer. According to Lanza, species such as cows and goats are now routinely cloned with few problems.
Species that have not been repeatedly cloned still face risks. The nuclear transfer process disrupts the cell and often causes it to die. The number of sick and dead individuals produced by nuclear transfer cloning is the reason nearly all scientists are opposed to human reproductive cloning. But even if nuclear transfer cloning could be perfected in humans or Neanderthals, it would likely require a horrifying period of trial and error. There is, however, another option.
The best way to clone Neanderthals may be to create stem cells that have their DNA. In recent years, geneticists have learned how to take skin cells and return them to a state called pluripotency, where they can become almost any type of cell in the human body. Church proposes to use the MAGE technique to alter a stem cell's DNA to match the Neanderthal genome. That stem cell would be left to reproduce, creating a colony of cells that could be programmed to become any type of cell that existed in the Neanderthal's body. Colonies of heart, brain, and liver cells, or possibly entire organs, could be grown for research purposes.
This technique could also be used to create a person. A stem cell with Neanderthal DNA could be implanted in a human blastocyst--a cluster of cells in the process of developing into an embryo. Then, all of the non-Neanderthal cells could be kept from growing. The individual who developed from that blastocyst would be entirely the result of Neanderthal genes. In effect, it would be a cloned Neanderthal. Church believes that after the earliest stages of development, the genes would express themselves as they did in the original individual, eliminating any influences from the modern human or chimpanzee cell.
The technique is new, and has only been tested in mice so far, but Church thinks it might work in humans. However, he points out that anyone cloned by this process would still be lacking the environmental and cultural factors that would have influenced how the original Neanderthals grew up. "They would be something new," Church says, "neo-Neanderthals."
In northern Spain 49,000 years ago, 11 Neanderthals were murdered. Their tooth enamel shows that each of them had gone through several periods of severe starvation, a condition their assailants probably shared. Cut marks on the bones indicate the people were butchered with stone tools. About 700 feet inside El Sidrön cave, a research team including Lalueza-Fox excavated 1,700 bones from that cannibalistic feast. Much of what is known about Neanderthal genetics comes from those 11 individuals.
Lalueza-Fox does not plan to sequence the entire genome of the El Sidrön Neanderthals. He is interested in specific genes. "I choose genes that are somehow related to individuality," he says. "I'd like to create a personal image of these guys." So far, his work has shown that Neanderthals had a unique variant of the gene for pale skin and red hair, which may mean their skin and hair color differed from modern humans. Lalueza-Fox tested the blood types of two Neanderthals and found they were both type O. He also discovered that modern humans and Neanderthals share a version of a gene called FOXP2, which is associated with language ability and means that Neanderthals probably spoke their own languages.
The Neanderthals broke away from the lineage of modern humans around 450,000 years ago. They evolved larger brains and became shorter than their likely ancestor, Homo heidelbergensis. They also developed a wider variety of stone tools and more efficient techniques for making them. On average, Neanderthals had brains that were 100 cubic centimeters (about 3 ounces) larger than those of people living today. But those differences are likely due to their larger overall body size. Those large brains were housed inside skulls that were broader and flatter, with lower foreheads than modern humans. Their faces protruded forward and lacked chins. Their arms and the lower part of their legs were shorter than modern humans', making them slower and less efficient runners, but they also had more muscle mass. Their bones were often thicker and stronger than ours, but they typically show a lot of healed breaks that are thought to result from hunting techniques requiring close contact with large game such as bison and mammoths. They had barrel-shaped chests and broad, projecting noses, traits some paleoanthropologists believe would have helped Neanderthals breathe more easily when chasing prey in cold environments.
Recent studies comparing Neanderthal and modern human anatomy have created some surprising insights. "Neanderthals are not just sort of funny Eskimos who lived 60,000 years ago," says Jean-Jacques Hublin, a paleoanthropologist at Max Planck. "They have a different way to give birth to babies, differences in life history, shape of inner ear, genetics, the speed of development of individuals, weaning, age of puberty." A study comparing Neanderthal and modern children showed Neanderthals had shorter childhoods. Some paleoanthropologists believe they reached physical maturity at age 15.
As different as Neanderthals were, they may not have been different enough to be considered a separate species. "There are humans today who are more different from each other in phenotype [physical characteristics]," says John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin. He has studied differences in the DNA of modern human populations to understand the rate of evolutionary change in Homo sapiens. Many of the differences between a Neanderthal clone and a modern human would be due to genetic changes our species has undergone since Neanderthals became extinct. "In the last 30,000 years we count about 2,500 to 3,000 events that resulted in positive functional changes [in the human genome]," says Hawks. Modern humans, he says, are as different from Homo sapiens who lived in the Neolithic period 10,000 years ago, as Neolithic people would have been from Neanderthals.
Clones created from a genome that is more than 30,000 years old will not have immunity to a wide variety of diseases, some of which would likely be fatal. They will be lactose intolerant, have difficulty metabolizing alcohol, be prone to developing Alzheimer's disease, and maybe most importantly, will have brains different from modern people's.
Bruce Lahn at the University of Chicago studies the evolutionary history of the genes that control human brain development. One gene that affects brain size particularly interests him, a variant of the microcephalin gene, which Lahn thinks may have entered the human gene pool through interbreeding with Neanderthals. If that turns out to be true, roughly 75 percent of the world's population has a brain gene inherited from Neanderthals. Lahn is excited to see what the Neanderthal microcephalin gene sequence looks like. "Is the Neanderthal sequence more similar to the ancestral version or the newer, derived version of the gene?" Lahn asks. "Or is the Neanderthal yet a third version that is very different from either of the two human versions? No matter how you look at it, it makes that data very interesting.
The Neanderthals' brains made them capable of some impressive cultural innovations. They were burying their dead as early as 110,000 years ago, which means that they had a social system that required formal disposal of the deceased. Around 40,000 years ago, they adopted new stone-tool-making traditions, the Châttelperronian tradition in Western Europe and the Uluzzian in Italy, that included a greater variety of tools than they had used in hundreds of thousands of years. But even if they were as adaptable as Homo sapiens, the question remains--if they were so smart, why are they dead? Chris Stringer of London's Natural History Museum believes our species hunted and gathered food so intensively that there simply was not enough room for the Neanderthals to make a living. In other words, they had the same problem as many species facing extinction today--they were crowded out of their ecological niche by Homo sapiens. Finding a place in the world for a Neanderthal clone would be only one dilemma that would have to be solved.
Bernard Rollin, a bioethicist and professor of philosophy at Colorado State University, doesn't believe that creating a Neanderthal clone would be an ethical problem in and of itself. The problem lies in how that individual would be treated by others. "I don't think it is fair to put people...into a circumstance where they are going to be mocked and possibly feared," he says, "and this is equally important, it's not going to have a peer group. Given that humans are at some level social beings, it would be grossly unfair." The sentiment was echoed by Stringer, "You would be bringing this Neanderthal back into a world it did not belong to....It doesn't have its home environment anymore."
There were no cities when the Neanderthals went extinct, and at their population's peak there may have only been 10,000 of them spread across Europe. A cloned Neanderthal might be missing the genetic adaptations we have evolved to cope with the world's greater population density, whatever those adaptations might be. But, not everyone agrees that Neanderthals were so different from modern humans that they would automatically be shunned as outcasts.
"I'm convinced that if one were to raise a Neanderthal in a modern human family he would function just like everybody else," says Trenton Holliday, a paleoanthropologist at Tulane University. "I have no reason to doubt he could speak and do all the things that modern humans do."
"I think there would be no question that if you cloned a Neanderthal, that individual would be recognized as having human rights under the Constitution and international treaties," says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. The law does not define what a human being is, but legal scholars are debating questions of human rights in cases involving genetic engineering. "This is a species-altering event," says Andrews, "it changes the way we are creating a new generation." How much does a human genome need to be changed before the individual created from it is no longer considered human?
And part 2
Quote
Legal precedent in the United States seems to be on the side of Neanderthal human rights. In 1997, Stuart Newman, a biology professor at New York Medical School attempted to patent the genome of a chimpanzee-human hybrid as a means of preventing anyone from creating such a creature. The patent office, however, turned down his application on the basis that it would violate the Constitution's 13th amendment prohibition against slavery. Andrews believes the patent office's ruling shows the law recognizes that an individual with a half-chimpanzee and half-human genome would deserve human rights. A Neanderthal would have a genome that is even more recognizably human than Newman's hybrid. "If we are going to give the Neanderthals humans rights...what's going to happen to that individual?" Andrews says. "Obviously, it won't have traditional freedoms. It's going to be studied and it's going to be experimented on. And yet, if it is accorded legal protections, it will have the right to not be the subject of research, so the very reasons for which you would create it would be an abridgment of rights."
Human rights laws vary widely around the world. "There is not a universal ban on cloning," says Anderson. "Even in the United States there are some states that ban it, others that don't." On August 8, 2005, the United Nations voted to ban human cloning. It sent a clear message that most governments believe that human cloning is unethical. The ban, however, is non-binding.
The legal issues surrounding a cloned Neanderthal would not stop with its rights. Under current laws, genomes can be patented, meaning that someone or some company could potentially own the genetic code of a long-dead person. Svante Pääbo, who heads the Neanderthal genome sequencing project at Max Planck, refused to comment for this article, citing concerns about violating an embargo agreement with the journal that is going to publish the genome sequence. But he did send Archaeology this statement:"We have no plans to patent any of the genes in the Neanderthal."
The ultimate goal of studying human evolution is to better understand the human race. The opportunity to meet a Neanderthal and see firsthand our common but separate humanity seems, on the surface, too good to pass up. But what if the thing we learned from cloning a Neanderthal is that our curiosity is greater than our compassion? Would there be enough scientific benefit to make it worth the risks? "I'd rather not be on record saying there would," Holliday told me, laughing at the question. "I mean, come on, of course I'd like to see a cloned Neanderthal, but my desire to see a cloned Neanderthal and the little bit of information we would get out of it...I don't think it would be worth the obvious problems." Hublin takes a harder line. "We are not Frankenstein doctors who use human genes to create creatures just to see how they work." Noonan agrees, "If your experiment succeeds and you generate a Neanderthal who talks, you have violated every ethical rule we have," he says, "and if your experiment fails...well. It's a lose-lose." Other scientists think there may be circumstances that could justify Neanderthal cloning.
"If we could really do it and we know we are doing it right, I'm actually for it," says Lahn. "Not to understate the problem of that person living in an environment where they might not fit in. So, if we could also create their habitat and create a bunch of them, that would be a different story."
"We could learn a lot more from a living adult Neanderthal than we could from cell cultures," says Church. Special arrangements would have to be made to create a place for a cloned Neanderthal to live and pursue the life he or she would want, he says. The clone would also have to have a peer group, which would mean creating several clones, if not a whole colony. According to Church, studying those Neanderthals, with their consent, would have the potential to cure diseases and save lives. The Neanderthals' differently shaped brains might give them a different way of thinking that would be useful in problem-solving. They would also expand humanity's genetic diversity, helping protect our genus from future extinction. "Just saying 'no' is not necessarily the safest or most moral path," he says. "It is a very risky decision to do nothing."
Hawks believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. "We are going to bring back the mammoth...the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away." He doesn't think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. "In the end," Hawks says, "we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I'm just sure of it."
Zach Zorich is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.
Very interesting, thanks for the link.
Quote from: Viking on February 10, 2010, 03:37:38 PM
Anything with Homo in it's species name gets human rights.
AFAIK, there's absolutely no statute that says that, and no case law either. For Neanderthals, I think they probably would be considered human, and therefore get the same rights as the rest of us, but for Homo Erectus, I'm not so sure. Though as grumbler points out, it's not 100% clear that Neanderthals
are a different species. When I was a kid, a lot of textbooks taught that they were Homo sapiens, and that were simply differentiated by their culture. Other sources said that Neanderthals were a separate sub-species--Homo sapiens neanderthalis (vs Homo sapiens sapiens for modern humans). The idea that they were a different species within the genus Homo seems to have become the consensus sometime in the 1980's.
The human rights issue is addressed in the 2nd part of the article I posted.
Specifically this section.
QuoteLegal precedent in the United States seems to be on the side of Neanderthal human rights. In 1997, Stuart Newman, a biology professor at New York Medical School attempted to patent the genome of a chimpanzee-human hybrid as a means of preventing anyone from creating such a creature. The patent office, however, turned down his application on the basis that it would violate the Constitution's 13th amendment prohibition against slavery. Andrews believes the patent office's ruling shows the law recognizes that an individual with a half-chimpanzee and half-human genome would deserve human rights. A Neanderthal would have a genome that is even more recognizably human than Newman's hybrid. "If we are going to give the Neanderthals humans rights...what's going to happen to that individual?" Andrews says. "Obviously, it won't have traditional freedoms. It's going to be studied and it's going to be experimented on. And yet, if it is accorded legal protections, it will have the right to not be the subject of research, so the very reasons for which you would create it would be an abridgment of rights."
If his creation was illegal then he doesn't get any rights at all. Pretty simple.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on February 14, 2010, 01:13:08 AM
The human rights issue is addressed in the 2nd part of the article I posted.
Specifically this section.(cropped)
That was a patent office case, not a court case. It wouldn't have any bearing or set any precednet as to what would happen if a cloned Neanderthal was to sue for the right to vote, or just to refuse to be the subject of further scientific study.
I believe that if such an individual were able to take the stand in court on their own behalf, the mere fact that they were able to address the court would probably lead to the court ruling that they have the same rights as any other person. And I think that a Neanderthal would be able to do so. But, as I stated, I have doubts about a Homo Erectus.
Quote from: The Brain on February 14, 2010, 03:43:40 AM
If his creation was illegal then he doesn't get any rights at all. Pretty simple.
If that were the case, people born as a result of rapes wouldn't get any rights at all.
And people born from sodomy.
Quote from: dps on February 14, 2010, 06:27:47 AM
If that were the case, people born as a result of rapes wouldn't get any rights at all.
Is conception illegal? Do we need to blame the rape victim as well?
Quote from: The Brain on February 14, 2010, 06:30:20 AM
And people born from sodomy.
MB posted something about some chick who got pregant as a result of a blowjob and a knife.
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2010, 02:52:21 PM
Quote from: dps on February 14, 2010, 06:27:47 AM
If that were the case, people born as a result of rapes wouldn't get any rights at all.
Is conception illegal? Do we need to blame the rape victim as well?
What blame? Rape is against the law. If a pregnancy results, the victim is no more to blame for that than for the rape itself (i.e., not at all) but it's still the result of an illegal act.
Sorry, blame was a mistake. Meant to say "convict." Conception is not against the law.
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2010, 03:51:52 PM
Sorry, blame was a mistake. Meant to say "convict." Conception is not against the law.
Huh? I wasn't talking about prosecuting anyone for anything. I was responding to The Brain's assertion that a person who was created by an illegal act would have no rights.
Quote from: dps on February 14, 2010, 04:01:47 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 14, 2010, 03:51:52 PM
Sorry, blame was a mistake. Meant to say "convict." Conception is not against the law.
Huh? I wasn't talking about prosecuting anyone for anything. I was responding to The Brain's assertion that a person who was created by an illegal act would have no rights.
They could theoretically have powers though.
Quote from: Queequeg on February 11, 2010, 06:34:41 AM
Quote from: Pat on February 11, 2010, 12:08:33 AM
Only peoples with a history of drinking alcohol would be able to develop tolerance for alcohol, obviously.
Asians have been drinking forever, and they still get red-faced and pass out very, very quickly. I call BS.
For some reason, Spellus as a racist scumbag isn't that surprising.
Quote from: Neil on February 14, 2010, 04:35:39 PM
For some reason, Spellus as a racist scumbag isn't that surprising.
:huh:
My dad is a lawyer for a Japanese company. I've spent a substantial part of my life in Japan. I've seen the red-face for myself. I associated it with low tolerance, but it would appear I was wrong. There's even a Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_flush_reaction) article about it.
Yeah, Asians often do get the booze flush, but from personal experience their tolerance is, like everyone else, entirely dependent on their built-up tolerance and I guess their body mass too. I had a Japanese friend in college who could definitely drink me under the table... at least at first. :showoff:
I've always been under the impression that the problems within aboriginal groups nowdays with regard to booze was that poverty and lack of opportunities in their communities fueld excessive consumption, not any genetic or racial lack of tolerance to alcohol.
Quote from: dps on February 15, 2010, 06:32:40 PM
I've always been under the impression that the problems within aboriginal groups nowdays with regard to booze was that poverty and lack of opportunities in their communities fueld excessive consumption, not any genetic or racial lack of tolerance to alcohol.
Absolutely. You can take any poor and disadvantaged minority almost anywhere in the world and you'll find high rates of alcoholism.
If you grow up with both of your parents drinking, nobody really forcing you to go to school, no real role models of people working, is it any surprise you start drinking as well?
I'm pretty sure the Roma have very high alcoholism rates as well...
Quote from: Barrister on February 15, 2010, 06:46:25 PM
Quote from: dps on February 15, 2010, 06:32:40 PM
I've always been under the impression that the problems within aboriginal groups nowdays with regard to booze was that poverty and lack of opportunities in their communities fueld excessive consumption, not any genetic or racial lack of tolerance to alcohol.
Absolutely. You can take any poor and disadvantaged minority almost anywhere in the world and you'll find high rates of alcoholism.
If you grow up with both of your parents drinking, nobody really forcing you to go to school, no real role models of people working, is it any surprise you start drinking as well?
I'm pretty sure the Roma have very high alcoholism rates as well...
As best as I can tell, the Russian GNP right now is mostly based on alcohol production.
OK, that's stretching it a bit, but there's no doubt that Russia has an very high level of alcohol consumption.
Quote from: dps on February 15, 2010, 06:57:33 PM
Quote from: Barrister on February 15, 2010, 06:46:25 PM
Quote from: dps on February 15, 2010, 06:32:40 PM
I've always been under the impression that the problems within aboriginal groups nowdays with regard to booze was that poverty and lack of opportunities in their communities fueld excessive consumption, not any genetic or racial lack of tolerance to alcohol.
Absolutely. You can take any poor and disadvantaged minority almost anywhere in the world and you'll find high rates of alcoholism.
If you grow up with both of your parents drinking, nobody really forcing you to go to school, no real role models of people working, is it any surprise you start drinking as well?
I'm pretty sure the Roma have very high alcoholism rates as well...
As best as I can tell, the Russian GNP right now is mostly based on alcohol production.
OK, that's stretching it a bit, but there's no doubt that Russia has an very high level of alcohol consumption.
Plus oil, diamonds and russianbrides.ru
Quote from: Barrister on February 15, 2010, 06:46:25 PM
I'm pretty sure the Roma have very high alcoholism rates as well...
Not that I know of. They're known for stealing, not drinking. A theif drinking on the job wouldn't be very successful.
Am I the only one who keeps misreading this as cloned Netherlands?
Quote from: Tyr on February 17, 2010, 06:35:58 AM
Am I the only one who keeps misreading this as cloned Netherlands?
Probably, although the image you paint does raise some interesting possibilities.
Two Amsterdams would be very attractive to certain sectors of the British student body. for example.
Given the incredible new capabilities of genetic sequencing technology, it's now become clear that it will within the next couple of decades become possible to clone extinct species, including humans. Is this ethical?
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/08/genome-brings-ancient-girl-to-li.html?ref=hp
Quote
In a stunning technical feat, an international team of scientists has sequenced the genome of an archaic Siberian girl 31 times over, using a new method that amplifies single strands of DNA. The sequencing is so complete that researchers have as sharp a picture of this ancient genome as they would of a living person's, revealing, for example that the girl had brown eyes, hair, and skin. "No one thought we would have an archaic human genome of such quality," says Matthias Meyer, a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. "Everyone was shocked by the counts. That includes me."
That precision allows the team to compare the nuclear genome of this girl, who lived in Siberia's Denisova Cave more than 50,000 years ago, directly to the genomes of living people, producing a "near-complete" catalog of the small number of genetic changes that make us different from the Denisovans, who were close relatives of Neandertals. "This is the genetic recipe for being a modern human," says team leader Svante Pääbo, a paleogeneticist at the institute.
Ironically, this high-resolution genome means that the Denisovans, who are represented in the fossil record by only one tiny finger bone and two teeth, are much better known genetically than any other ancient human—including Neandertals, of which there are hundreds of specimens. The team confirms that the Denisovans interbred with the ancestors of some living humans and found that Denisovans had little genetic diversity, suggesting that their small population waned further as populations of modern humans expanded. "Meyer and the consortium have set up the field of ancient DNA to be revolutionized—again," says Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not part of the team. Evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania agrees: "It's really going to move the field forward."
Pääbo's group first gave the field a jolt in May 2010 by reporting a low-coverage sequence (1.3 copies on average) of the composite nuclear genome from three Neandertals. They found that 1% to 4% of the DNA of Europeans and Asians, but not of Africans, was shared with Neandertals and concluded that modern humans interbred with Neandertals at low levels.
Just 7 months later, the same group published 1.9 copies on average of a nuclear genome from a girl's pinky finger bone from Denisova Cave. They found she was neither a Neandertal nor a modern human—although bones of both species had been found in the cave—but a new lineage that they called Denisovan. The team found "Denisovan DNA" in some island Southeast Asians and concluded that their ancestors also interbred with the ancestors of Denisovans, probably in Asia.
But these genomes were too low quality to produce a reliable catalog of differences. Part of the problem was that ancient DNA is fragmentary, and most of it breaks down into single strands after it is extracted from bone.
Meyer's breakthrough came in developing a method to start the sequencing process with single strands of DNA instead of double strands, as is usually done. By binding special molecules to the ends of a single strand, the ancient DNA was held in place while enzymes copied its sequence. The result was a sixfold to 22-fold increase in the amount of Denisovan DNA sequenced from a meager 10-milligram sample from the girl's finger. The team was able to cover 99.9% of the mappable nucleotide positions in the genome at least once, and more than 92% of the sites at least 20 times, which is considered a benchmark for identifying sites reliably. About half of the 31 copies came from the girl's mother and half from her father, producing a genome "of equivalent quality to a recent human genome," says paleoanthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who was not part of the team.
Now, the view of the ancient genome is so clear that Meyer and his colleagues were able to detect for the first time that Denisovans, like modern humans, had 23 pairs of chromosomes, rather than 24 pairs, as in chimpanzees. By aligning the Denisovan genome with that of the reference human genome and counting mutations, the team calculated that the Denisovan and modern human populations finally split between 170,000 and 700,000 years ago.
The researchers also estimated ancient Denisovan population sizes by using methods to estimate the age of various gene lineages and the amount of difference between the chromosomes the girl inherited from her mother and father. They found that Denisovan genetic diversity, already low, shrank even more 400,000 years ago, reflecting small populations at that time. By contrast, our ancestors' population apparently doubled before their exodus from Africa.
The team also counted the differences between Denisovans and chimps, and found that they have fewer differences than do modern people and chimps. The girl's lineage had less time to accumulate mutations, and the "missing evolution" suggests she died about 80,000 years ago, although the date is tentative, says co-author David Reich, a population geneticist at Harvard University. If this date—the first proof that a fossil can be directly dated from its genome—holds up, it is considerably older than the very rough dates of 30,000 to more than 50,000 years for the layer of sediment where the fossils of Denisovans, Neandertals, and modern humans all were found.
The team says the new genome confirms their previous findings, showing that about 3% of the genomes of living people in Papua New Guinea come from Denisovans, while the Han and Dai on mainland China have only a trace of Denisovan DNA. Furthermore, the team determined that Papuans have more Denisovan DNA on their autosomes, inherited equally often from both parents, than on their X chromosomes, inherited twice as often from the mother. This curious pattern suggests several possible scenarios, including that male Denisovans interbred with female modern humans, or that these unions were genetically incompatible, with natural selection weeding out some of the X chromosomes, Reich says.
The new genome also suggests one odd result. By using the detailed Denisovan genome to sharpen the view of their close cousins the Neandertals, the team concludes that living East Asians have more Neandertal DNA than Europeans have. But most Neandertal fossils are from Europe; paleoanthropologist Richard Klein of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, calls the result "peculiar."
Most exciting to Pääbo is the "nearly complete catalog" of differences in genes between the groups. This includes 111,812 single nucleotides that changed in modern humans in the past 100,000 years or so. Of those, eight were in genes associated with the wiring of the nervous system, including those involved in the growth of axons and dendrites and a gene implicated in autism. Pääbo is intrigued in particular by a change in a gene that is regulated by the so-called FOXP2 gene, implicated in speech disorders. It is "tempting to speculate that crucial aspects of synaptic transmission may have changed in modern humans," the team wrote. Thirty-four genes are associated with disease in humans. The list suggests some obvious candidates for gene-expression studies. "The cool thing is that it isn't an astronomically large list," Pääbo says. "Our group and others will probably be able to analyze most of them in the next decade or two."
Back in Leipzig, the mood is upbeat, as researchers pull fossil samples off the shelf to test anew with "Matthias's method." First on Pääbo's list: Neandertal bone samples, to try to produce a Neandertal genome to rival that of the little Denisovan girl.
For a more detailed version of this story, please see the 31 August issue of Science.
The Hawks take on it.
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/denisova/denisova-high-coverage-2012.html
Did you have to revive a 2.5 year old thread for this? :rolleyes:
I kill me.
Quote from: Syt on August 31, 2012, 01:08:19 AM
Did you have to revive a 2.5 year old thread for this? :rolleyes:
There was a big advance in technology that directly impacts whether or not this will be possible. So, yes.