Hopefully the Brentwood Bubble hasn't prevented you from hearing about the sequencing of Neandertal DNA, and the discovery that some modern human lineages contain some Neandertal DNA. (Image courtesy of Anthropological Institute, University of Zürich).
Carl Zimmer has a great piece on it: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2010/05/06/skull-caps-and-genomes/ . PZ Meyers has a good article on what this means in genetics: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/05/neandertal.php (note: PZ Meyers is a very popular Science blog, but he also writes from an anti-theistic perspective. If this would offend you, don't click.)
At some point in our human history, there was successful cross-species mating: we shared the planet, and apparently our beds, with another intelligent human species. Not us, but apparently close enough.
What were they like? What did they do better? Worse? Say we could get a whole Neandertal genomes, with enough for sufficient genetic variability. Unlikely, but I never thought we'd get this either. This is another intelligent species - wiped out by accidents of history. Could we use a human egg, and create a Neandertal baby/family? Are we obligated to? Are we obligated not to?
We are still discovering what it means to be human - what does it mean to be Neandertal? They may represent a completely new point of view - we talk of finding intelligent 'out there' through programs such as SETI - could we find it here, right here, buried in our past.
The Neandertals are our brothers and sisters in humanity, but our record in accepting 'different' members of our own species isn't terribly good. Should we refrain to protect them from us? Is that even fair?
What if we found out our ancestors wiped them out, either directly or through disease? We know we're certainly capable of genocide both deliberately and accidentally.
Can we do it just for fun? Intelligence appears to be rare in the universe - should we protect whatever sparks arose?
We've often asked where we've come from, and where we're going - perhaps with a larger human 'family' we could find better answers. What an Easter story that would be - a literal resurrection of another human intelligence.
Regards,
Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment