So...if your daughter wants to marry a Neaderthal, and you wish she'd marry one of "her own kind" does that make you a bigot?

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/201 ... humans.ars

Right out of Eaters of the Dead if you ask me...

More like N-Words by Ted Kosmatka. That short story is awesome. One day, the world wakes up to images of neanderthal children which were cloned in Korea. Hundreds of them. People began to adopt them, etc, to deal with the humanitarian crisis that it created. Then these kids went to school. The excelled at everything. Everything. They were smarter, stronger, better. Even morally stronger. And people began to hate them.

The story begins with a widow who was burying her neanderthal husband, murdered by a bigot, with all of them along the streets shouting at her and condemning their child. It's a powerful story.

http://sciencefictionbiology.com/direct ... -kosmatka/

EscapePod did a decent audio version of the story: http://escapepod.org/2009/05/07/episode-198-n-words/

I think this story very accurate portrays a possibility in our near future. I am not saying they will be more intelligent or anything like that. But it's only a matter of time before all of us stare at an image of other humans sharing our world. The implications will be enormously complex and deep.

Eaters of the Dead is awesome too. But I don't think it really was meant to explore those implications. He only wanted to construct some kind of science fictional basis for Beowulf.

This stuff fascinated me when I first heard about it just because I think it exemplifies the most basic of human traits.

First we ate beside them, then we had sex with them, then we killed them off.

This kind of research really describes a situation where humanity as we know it emerged from several groups. Some of us with European descent seem to carry neanderthal genetics. People with this Asiatic and Oceanic descent have another species DNA intertwined.

I don't really accept the premise that our archaic homo sapiens ancestors exterminated other species like that. I don't even accept that they had to compete over resources until after the ice age had begun, and even then they often lived on different sources of food and materials. They seemed to have traded as well.

More importantly, if you are leading a homo sapiens clan, it might behoove for one of your females to carry a neanderthal's baby if it were possible. That child will be hugely powerful. That provides immediate strengths. Furthermore, absorbing some of the genetic traits would provide you with very fast access to millions of years of evolution and adaptation to cold climates. Neanderthals had already endured a previous ice age, apparently.

I think the story might have been very different from our ancestors wanting to exterminate these people. In some case, fighting probably did occur. But they didn't have the same reasons for fighting that we have known since the agricultural revolution began (history). It was a completely different world, with different modes of existence. Warfare is not necessarily the same at all for them. Warfare between clans of the same species seems to me far more likely. They more likely will compete over the same resources. A neanderthal and homo sapien clan might complement each other more than oppose.

And if these other species lacked the same level of intelligence, I can see how homo sapiens forcibly absorbed them more than exterminated them. I don't really know. Just the results of a simple thought experiment.

It puts people's concerns about race into perspective.
Interacial differences are minor compared to interspecies differences.
And even interspecies differences can be bridged... to some degree... The product of the union can bring new strengths and abilities that can assist in survival.
Together we are mightier than we are divided.
Food for thought.

Judging from how humans have behaved in recorded history, which...granted... might be very different from tens of thousands of years ago, I think it would be much more likely that it wouldn't be one of "your" females carrying a neanderthal baby, but a neanderthal woman carrying your baby. First off, if a neanderthal was so much more powerful it would be more likely that a neanderthal mother would be better equipped to carry human HS baby to term than a HS woman carrying a half neanderthal baby to term.

I suppose it depends why you want her to marry her own kind.

Sort of reminds me of my mom telling me my grandfather was opposed to her marrying anyone outside their own ethnic "brand".

It's a nice article. Especially since it undermines the "we humans are special and God created us special and different from anyone else" I keep hearing from my rightwing evangelical friends.

We're all animals after all... I wonder if way back then people were facing the choice of "breed with these other populations becuase they're the only others around" or something more emotional.