I’m afraid that the “powers that be” couldn’t resist using (or misusing) Neandertals.
And if they found they could bring back this species of human, than (they’d probably think) why not bring back other human (or near-human species?)
I’m afraid that they’d be exploited in many ways, and they’d end up as a cheap source of menial labour for those in power. (Would they even realise that they’re being exploited and mistreated?)
Even if our science found that they COULD do it, we’d have to examine the moral and ethical questions of proceeding with such a project.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything about ethics. Doesn’t belong in this thread.
But Rippington, before we have the biotechnology to recreate extinct species we will surely have the biotechnology to genetically engineer human beings. The ethical, legal, and social issues will have been well worked out way before then.
Why recreate neandertals as slaves if you could genetically engineer intelligent but docile Homo sapiens sapiens? But I don’t think that’s going to happen much.
Why would we allow slavery of Neanderthals? If they were of nearly human intelligence (which they must have been, since they manufactured complex tools and had brains larger than modern humans), why would we decide that they could be owned? Why wouldn’t we decide they were human beings with human rights?
Besides, what exactly would you use Neanderthal slaves FOR? Factory work? Surely it would be cheaper and easier to either use machines or hire more third world laborers who can take care of themselves on their own time. Why would you think slavery of Neandertals would make more sense than slavery of modern humans? If the economic incentives for slavery were so great, why don’t the mysterious powers that be just re-institute human slavery today?
Sure, I can imagine a future where Neandertals are slaves. But that dystopian future would only exist if humans were slaves too.
We don’t even know how many chromosomes they had. Humans have 46 pair, but chimps and gorillas (who share a common ancestor with modern humans and Neanderthals) have 48. Somewhere along the line of human evolution, a pair fused, but we don’t know when this happened. So Neanderthals could have 48, too.
As far a fiction goes, Robert Sawyer wrote a trilogy in which we discover a parallel dimension in which we went extinct and Neanderthals still existed. They were technological, but didn’t have agriculture.
It was an interesting premise, seeing how a totally different species might live in the modern world. The last book got into some tedious stuff about there being a gene for believing in god, but overall it was okay.