Let’s suppose, for example, that Neanderthals had a fairly sophisticated language, but were unable to speak of, or conceptualize in the future tense. You wouldn’t be able to tell a Neanderthal that he needed to do something a week from now, as that wold have no meaning for him.
Surely our language did not spring into existence in its present form. It’s possible that it was fully developed in the common ancestor we share with Neanderthals, but that is certainly not the consensus view of scientists today. And if our common ancestor didn’t have our language capability, it’s hard to imagine that Neanderthals would have. That would be a miracle of convergent evolution.
Seconded. So fascinating and so strange; and though I don’t live in a part of the world to which marsupials are native, I’m a sucker for them. A marsupial wolf-like beast with stripes – wow ! (There are a few proponents of the notion that the Tasmanian Tiger is not quite extinct, but survives “under the humans’ radar”, in very small numbers in highly-remote locations. I’d love to believe that, but consider it effectively out of the question.)
In most cases, I’d say no to a lot of these because they lack a supporting ecosystem and would just be a zoo curiosity. For the Tazzie Tiger though, it would happily thrive on all of the invasive species like rabbits and toads
Considering how close other creatures (apes, ravens, parrots) come to human language capability (which is to say “not all that close”, but still much, much closer than most other creatures, and with much, much more distant genetic relationships with modern humans than Neanderthals), I would be very surprised if the “average Neanderthal” didn’t fall somewhere within the 5% to 95% of the language ability of modern human diversity (which might correspond to IQ test scores of ~65 or so to ~135 or so).
In other words, I think it’s very unlikely that Neanderthals fall significantly outside of the spectrum of “pretty dumb modern human” to “very intelligent modern human”, which should include enough understanding of language for basic communications (especially when the baby Neanderthals would necessarily be raised by modern humans). I’m not sure if I buy the hypothesis of some sort of different type of cognition – by all evidence, Neanderthals lived in ways that modern humans would be fully capable of doing, and probably in ways that were very similar to the lifestyles of some recent groups of humans in cold environments.
I discussed this in some detail (with various supporters and detracters) in this thread. I think the basic plan in post #7 of that thread is pretty sound.
I tend to be more on the “optimistic” side, myself, when it comes to Neanderthal smarts. But it’s more hope than science. Let’s be clear on what scientists are actually saying on the subject. There are about 3 main schools of thoughts, not equally supported:
Neanderthals were pretty much the same as us, except for some minor areas. But cognitively very, very close.
Fully Articulate speech is a defining characteristic of H. sapiens, not found in other human relative species.
Fully Articulate speech is something that only arose in the last 60K years or so, and earlier members of our species, along with other contemporaneous humans species, were lacking that key feather.
I don’t think #1 has that many adherents, with most of the scientist falling in #2 or #3. The archeological record indicates some significant behavioral differences between us and Neanderthals (they lived in much smaller groups for instance), and if you assume they could speak as well as we do, then you’d have to assume that our common ancestor, some 500-600k years ago, could as well. That’s a stretch that very few scientists are willing to make.
It’s certainly possible that Neanderthals developed their large brains for a different purpose than we did, and maybe they were smarter in some ways than we are. Who knows.
For a while it seemed like Neandertals* went through an affirmative action program; they were labeled Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, and the differences between them and modern humans were downplayed. When dealing with speculative theories, even science has fads.
There were a number of discoveries in the 50s and 60s (burials, for one) that made people re-think the Cave Man Brute image from precious decades. It was assumed that Neanderthals were the direct ancestors of Europeans, and a sort of Flower Power image was popular. The pendulum swung a bit too far in the opposite direction, I think.
But DNA testing blew that apart and we started thinking of the differences between us again, and they are generally now considered a distinct species from us.
As for spelling, Neanderthal is the older German spelling. You don’t have to use it, since the modern spelling is Neandertal, but taxonomy is conservative, and the binomial description will aways retain the older spelling, as it was adopted before the spelling was modernized: Homo neanderthalensis. I use the older spelling for consistency. Just don’t pronounce the “th” as in English, though.
I would guess cloned Neanderthal. I’m not sure how a human/chimp hybrid would even work – we can’t fertilize human eggs with chimp sperm (or vice versa), as far as I know. For the clone, we know how it works, and we’ve done it with other species – we just need good DNA and to refine the technique.
Will that Neanderthal clone be property or a person? I am not sure the game is worth the candle to produce what may amount to just a low-functioning child. The clone can teach us nothing about how Neanderthals actually lived their lives.
Not to hijack this thread, but AFIIK, no one has really tried. Not in the modern, scientific sense of the term.
It would certainly tell us a good deal about the mental capacity and the ability for language. There is a huge debate about the Neanderthals’ ability to use what we call “fully articulate speech”.
So is it a person or property? If it has low mental capacity and little or no language ability, how did you do more than deliberately bring what amounts to a badly retarded child into the world out of curiosity? That’ s ok if is property, not so much if it is a person.
We generally don’t deliberately bring low functioning people into the world. We care for the ones that are born out of moral obligation. Are you curious enough to care for it and pay for a lifetime of that care yourself or is curiosity about an extinct variety of humans not that pressing?
Yes, and it’s both. And we do often deliberately bring low functioning people into the world - many families find out early that their baby will have problems but continue the pregnancy anyway. In this case, I think the motive of scientific curiosity is a good as many other reasons to create a human life, as long as the life is treated well.
And considering the brain size and evidence of complex group behavior of neanderthals, I think it’s extremely unlikely that a neanderthal would be outside of the range of the wildly diverse intelligence and behavior of modern people.
In other words, this new person might be weird, and they might be dumb, but they probably wouldn’t be the weirdest or dumbest person you’ve ever met.
