The
Neanderthals--classified either as
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis or
Homo neanderthalensis, depending on the classifier's view of their proximity to
Homo sapiens sapiens--has entered the news recently, as the
Neanderthal Genome Project' publication of the Neanderthal genome has hit. John Hawks provides an
excellent overviewKeeping that in mind, the human-Neandertal difference is startlingly close to this human-human difference measurement. The Neandertal is only 10 percent more different from the draft human genome than these two human sequences are from each other.
It seems very likely that we will find pairs of living human populations where the average genetic divergence is older -- maybe much older -- than this human-Neandertal divergence. For instance, it seems almost certain that the great genetic variability among living African groups will exceed this human-Neandertal difference.
Some geneticists have noted that European and Asian populations seem to be a genetic "subset" of African populations, at least for many genetic loci. With these kinds of numbers, it looks like Neandertals may be a subset of living human diversity in the same sense. I've never much liked that formulation, because "subset" is never really an accurate description of the genetic relationships. But if the seat of living human diversity is Africa, adding Neandertals to the mix may not change that pattern at all.
As Green and colleagues note, most of the genetic divergence between humans and Neandertals, and between humans and other living humans, is actually much older than the divergence of these populations from each other.
The possibility that
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens interbred can't be ruled out--genes may have flowed between the two populations, in one or both ways, before the Neanderthals' apparent extinction more than twenty thousand years ago.
If we end up developing a sample Neanderthal genome, the rather startling possibility arises of producing cloned Neanderthals. Why not, if the technology exists for people (jaded billionaires?) to produce clones of the woolly mammoth for their chic estates in Alaska and Finnish Lapland? There would be at least some passable scientific reasons for cloning Neanderthals--Stephen Strauss
argued last year that cloned Neanderthals could demonstrate abilities that would confirm or deny our readings of their archeological record.
Being able to figure out whether Neanderthals were quasi-human by looking at strings of genes strikes me as likely as unreliable as trying to figure out their language, marriage, hunting, music, art and habits by looking at their fossilized bones.
Again, I repeat we have to see how the total biological machine works. And I don't see how one is going to do that without making one or two or five or some bigger number of Neanderthals. Then we let the clones loose and see what living Neanderthals do.
Yes, yes, I know this doesn't account for any putative Neanderthal culture.
If they passed on axe-making tips or told firepit tales of the valour of Ug-Luk the Magnificent, we aren't going to be able to exactly recreate that.
But we can nurse them to adulthood, try to teach them survival skills, a language and then let them do for themselves. We can bring them back from extinction limbo and let them make a life.
However imperfect this is, it undoubtedly would lift our understanding of the Neanderthals out of its present slough of ignorance.
Against this are the massive ethical issues
identified last month by William Saletan in
Slate. The terribly fragile constraints applied against human cloning and genetic engineering seem to be strictly limited to
Homo sapiens sapiens, not to another human species.
As this uncomfortable reality of the past becomes a future prospect—transitional creatures between human and nonhuman—the "human dignity" framework starts to look a bit shaky. George Church, a leading geneticist, suggests (in Wade's paraphrase) that scientists could "modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee," bringing it "close enough to that of Neanderthals, [with] the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee." No human clones or products involved. At least, no "modern" humans. This leaves the question of whether we're entitled to mess around in the lab with "another human species." But it's hard to see how the bishops and other religious critics of biotechnology can plunge into this area, having drawn a tight moral line around our species.
If we do this Church's way, I don't see how conservatives can object. They didn't object last year when scientists announced the cloning of rhesus macaque embryos. That, too, was the creation of nonhuman primate life. Follow the human lineage three branches beyond the primate order, and the rhesus macaques are still with us. Follow the human line two more branches, and the chimps are still with us. One more branch, and you're down to us and the Neanderthals. If it's OK to clone a macaque and a chimp, it's pretty hard to explain why, at that last fork in the road, you're forbidden to clone a Neanderthal.
Is the idea repugnant? Absolutely. But that's not because we'd be defacing humanity. It's because we'd be looking at it.
The idea of cloning Neanderthals appeals to me on a few levels. The audacity of the technological achievement impresses me and the possible benefits to science of having living Neanderthals might be worth considering, the project's major appeal to me consisting of the possibility of bringing another human species back from the void tens of thousands of years after our lot wiped them out. Equally, the idea appalls me: I very much doubt that the social and legal frameworks necessary to protect Neanderthals from a gratuitously powerful civilization exist, what with them being technically non-human and all. The possibility that, one day in the not too distant future, there might be a race of human beings deemed "soulless" or some such thing by at least some of the relevant authorities, terrifies me.
What do you think about the idea?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
