Educated cavemen.

[HairOfTheDog]

There was a special a few weeks ago on PBS on this. In the end the show said that modern humans and neanderthals inter-bred and most likely had a form of language.

Whether Neanderthals and modern humans inter-bred or simply share DNA from a common ancestor is probably the biggest point of contention right now amongst the scientists, at least based on what I've seen recently published and televised. Well, that and whether/how long modern humans co-existed with Neanderthals and if any co-existence was peaceful or if we instead drove them to extinction.

Seems like every month new research and opinions are rendered by equally legitimate sources who've come to opposite conclusions regarding the inter-breeding debate. If you search "did Neanderthals breed with modern humans?" you'll get a mix of recent "mostly likely" and "not likely" article results by scientists from both camps. Seems that it's still an unanswered question and open to interpretation.

Regarding Neanderthal cloning, the concept is interesting from a scientific perspective. Still, putting aside any moral objections, I don't see how cloning by using the Neanderthal DNA profile could really tell scientists much about how cavemen lived or communicated since the environment is so different today. All it could really accomplish is confirming what they looked like and possibly the Neanderthal's capacity to speak and learn (unless they put multiple cloned cavemen in a cloned Neanderthal environment, which is going way too far for me).

But, I'm of the mindset that environment and society are significant influences in how humans behave. Maybe those who believe that genetics are almost solely responsible for human behavior and that environmental influences are only secondary can foresee more benefits from such an experiment.

Personally, I hope that the cloning concept gets nixed.