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bring back neanderthals

 Give us some REAL diversity here.
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Steven Jay Gould says that there is "no way" we'll get enough DNA to bring back dinosaurs. But why can't we bring back neanderthals? There are plenty of remains, some have even been frozen. I really want to know if they could talk, or learn to read. Also I think having a few neanderthals around would get people to see just how closely all the people on earth today are related to each other. It might piss of the neanderthals though, but that can't be to bad. we already out bred them once ... we can do it again.

Of course it might turn out that they are smarter than us, but then we'd just use them to build rockets and stuff. Come on, it'd be great fun!

—futurebird, Jul 18 2001

clickity-click... http://www.halfbake..._20back_20barbapapa
[mihali, Jul 18 2001]

The Ugly Little Boy: the Movie! http://www.d-reamsc.../Movies/uglyboy.htm
With Demi Moore? THE PAIN, THE PAIN! [Uncle Nutsy, Jul 18 2001]

Dinosaur found alive in England http://www.annwiddecombemp.com/
[Pallex, Jul 18 2001]

One theory on Neanderthal extinction http://www.uth.tmc....mar_96/neander.html
They were just lazy sods [Guy Fox, Jul 18 2001]

The latest skinny on Neanderthals. http://news.bbc.co....1468000/1468482.stm
[angel, Jul 18 2001]

Discover article http://www.discover.../archive/index.html
This is older than I thought, oh how time flies by. [EvoketheTiger, Jul 18 2001]


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Annotation:







       But do we really know enough about prehistoric baking techniques to confidently say that we out bread them? I mean, sure, we have pumpernickel, sourdough and banana bread, but who knows what they may have had?
—PotatoStew, Jul 18 2001
   

       Personally, I'd rather see the woolly mammoth make a comeback.   

       Then we can hunt them into extinction for their tusks and shaggy coats again.
—mrkillboy, Jul 18 2001
   

       Baked, apart from the 'bread'ing thing. Professional footballers (pick a code, any code)
—UnaBubba, Jul 18 2001
   

       har har har a pun. I'd like to see mammoth's too. We can use elephants as surrogate wombs, and it'd give the neanderthals something to do.
—futurebird, Jul 18 2001
   

       Milford Wolpoff argues that there's no need to 'bring them back' because they never went away.
—angel, Jul 19 2001
   

       Baked in an old Isaac Asimov story (can't remember which one), where a Neanderthal is cloned from DNA (or something... been a long time since I read the story). He ends up in court standing up for his rights as a human being. It's a sort of well-meaning but rather disingenuous metaphor for the Civil Rights movement.   

       No... don't listen to me. I'm talking bollocks. Listen to sirrobin...
—Guy Fox, Jul 19 2001
   

       The Asimov story might have been Jerry Was a Man by Heinlein. Also halfbaked in David Zindell's triffic novel Neverness where a few thousand years before the main story a group of people wanted to get back to nature and reengineered themselves some neanderthal genes and set off into the wilderness.
—sirrobin, Jul 19 2001
   

       PotatoStew: I'm pretty sure we at least out-cheese them. France alone has more than 365 different types of cheese -- one for every day of the year. In prehistoric times, I don't think they had that many days in a year.
—beauxeault, Jul 19 2001
   

       More seriously, I thought I'd heard from PBS about efforts that are currently underway to create mammoths using sperm from animals found frozen whole. I don't recall whether the eggs were also from frozen mammoths or elephants, but the idea was that an elephant would carry the fetus.   

       And wouldn't it be interesting if we revived neanderthals and they de-volved into apes?
—beauxeault, Jul 19 2001
   

       i'd rather see barbapapa.
—mihali, Jul 19 2001
   

       [mihali]: Don't start that again!
—angel, Jul 19 2001
   

       [PeterSealy]: I'm sure I've even heard one theory that Homo Erectus was not a distinct species. These distinctions might turn out to be as spurious, at the end of the day, as the hoary old dolichocephalic / brachycephalic division.
—Guy Fox, Jul 19 2001
   

       Guy Fox: You're probably thinking of the classic story "The Ugly Little Boy" (Asimov's own third-favorite among his stories), later unnecessarily turned into a novel by Robert Silverberg. A movie version is threatened; see link.
—Uncle Nutsy, Jul 19 2001
   

       Didn't any of you see that "great" pauly shore movie Encino man. I mean come on, that is probably exactly how it would be.
—Vavon, Jul 19 2001
   

       Neanderthals are remarkably adaptable actors too. One of them has these films to his credit.   

       1999 - Blast from the Past .... Adam Webber
1998 - Gods and Monsters .... Clayton Boone
1998 - Still Breathing .... Fletcher McBracken
1997 - George of the Jungle .... George
1996 - Glory Daze .... Doug
1996 - Mrs. Winterbourne .... Hugh/Bill Winterbourne
1996 - Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy .... Placebo patient
1995 - Now and Then .... Vietnam Veteran
1995 - The Passion of Darkly Noon .... Darkly Noon
1994 - In the Army Now .... Link
1994 - The Scout .... Steve Nebraska
1994 - Airheads .... Chazz
1994 - With Honors .... Monty
1993 - Younger and Younger .... Winston Younger
1993 - Son in Law .... Link
1993 - Twenty Bucks .... Sam Mastrewski
1992 - Encino Man .... Link
1992 - School Ties .... David Greene
1991 - Dogfight .... Sailor #1
—UnaBubba, Jul 19 2001
   

       Actually, the bus driver in 'Speed' looked remarkably like a Neanderthal, too...big brow ridge and protruding jaw. Can't figure out who he is from IMDB's list, though...
—StarChaser, Jul 21 2001
   

       Hm... I always thought Sandra Bullock was kind of cute...
—PotatoStew, Jul 21 2001
   

       <pats PotatoStew gently on the head.> There, there...I know you're confused, but Sandra Bullock doesn't look anything like a six foot black gentleman. Trust me on this.
—StarChaser, Jul 21 2001
   

       There are certainly no neanderthals left. We killed them all, we are the only species that get rid of another.
—BALIKEKMEK, Jul 22 2001
   

       Awww, that's just not true. Species are out competing each other all the time. Extinction is a part of history. Of course we seem to have a knack for getting rid of other species more quickly and in greater numbers ... but we aren't the only creatures that do/have done that.
—futurebird, Jul 22 2001
   

       //we are the only species that get rid of another.//   

       Is that so? I'd like to know whether it was Ug or Grog who cleaned up the dinosaurs and the ammonites and trilobites and...
—UnaBubba, Jul 22 2001
   

       The Stewart Island Wren was nudged into extinction by the light-house-keeper's cat.
—angel, Jul 23 2001
   

       The domestic cat is actually being quite effective in nudging a number of wild animals towards extinction all around the British countryside, I understand.
And re the Cro-Magnon-exterminated-Neanderthal argument - this idea has fallen out of favour amongst archaeologists due to a lack of evidence whereas, to the best of my knowledge, there is some evidence of *peaceful* cohabitation.
—Guy Fox, Jul 23 2001
   

       Baked:
I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia. See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread and water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia. -William Saroyan
Inbreeding has its adherents, as its as close to Neanderthal as I've ever seen.
—thumbwax, Jul 23 2001
   

       Today as much as i know we have enough knowlegde to say that there has been a war between neanderthals and us. But this war was totally unfair since we were much smarter than they were so you know the result. We first get rid of them in africa, then swept them from the europe , starting from east to west. the age of the oldest remainders from neanderthals grows as we follow this route and the oldest tracks from neanderthals are in spain, in underground tunnels where they were hiding from us. but it didn't last long to find them.   

       there was a complete war with all the meanings. An extinction of species can2t be considered as such unless there is a conscious act of killing. don2t forget that we dind2t have to kill them in order to survive, we were superior to them.
—BALIKEKMEK, Jul 23 2001
   

       [Rod's] (way, way back in the annotations) We already have Neanderthal music, we call it Garage.
—CoolerKing, Aug 02 2001
   

       Referring back to Guy Fox's comments about Asimov's disingenuous metaphor for the Civil Rights movement: Has anyone ever seen Planet of the Apes 4 when the Apes, enslaved by humans in the year 1992, revolt in a plot that has constant references to the American Civil Rights movement?   

       In addition, I did just watch a long documentary on early humans on PBS the other day and the theory they set forth was that Cro-Magnan man was just more successful at survival and drove Neanderthal off to the fringes. However, I remember reading an article in Discover last year that speculated Cro-Magnan/Neanderthal cross breeding. So who knows?
—EvoketheTiger, Aug 02 2001
   


 

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