A Moral Question?

B

Big_Spark

With all the recent discoveries in Indonesia and the stories about "archaic" or primitive man still being alive somewhere it does introduce a very serious ethical and moral quandry for humans.

Lets forget the argument over whether they do or don't still live in the backwoods somewhere, but assume they have been found.

No way would anyone allow a species of human to become extinct, the political pressure would be tremendous to protect them, however if we leave them in their natural state then sooner or later they will dissapear..again this would be unacceptable to most people.

However to remove them from their natural environment would be very difficult, it would be virtually impossible to integrate them easily into our world, but equally they could not be kept in a Zoo or similar structure or environment.

Here is our moral question....What should we do..how would we deal with this situation..

It may seem a trivial question to some, but it is vitally important to us as a species should we be fortunate enough to find some of our fellow human species are still with us .

So I wonder what you lot think...and lets keep this sensible and mature..
 
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I don't think it could really be considered fully unless we find them.

As we all know, humans use something like 10% of their brain capacity. Also human cranium size has little or no relation to intelligence (particularly between different ethnicities) So, despite their diddy craniums they could still be considered "intelligent". There are some breeds of dog that are regarded to be more intelligent than the stupidest known humans, if they had the power of speech then we would regard them more highly.

So, presuming that Homo Florensis (sp?) has the power of speech, and an IQ approaching that of a "modern" human, then they would be capable of integrating if they wish.

I would be intrigued to see how a different sub-species of human integrating into our society. It would raise all sorts of questions such as
1) should intermarrying/interbreeding be accepted (needless to say, it would happen either way)
2) Would our education systems be suitable for their learning needs?
3) Would they have the intelligence to become a fully-functional part of society, or would they fall to the "Epsilon" roles?
4) rather obviously, how would they cope in a society built for people twice their height? (even those 1200mm lightswitches might be too high for them, and urinals wouldn't be fun)
 
I think Adam W is correct that this could not be properly considered unless this discovery was proven but as a hypothetical situation I think it would be necessary in the first instance to provide a protected habitat.

This would be until more is learned about the species e.g. communication potential, health implications, compatability with Homo Sapien Sapien species, etc. If integration were to take place it might be that, as under the many EU directives, new laws would be created to provide facilities, vehicles, etc. which would not preclude other humans on the basis of their physical characteristics from pursuing everyday activities.
 
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When I first heard of them (a few months back, wasn't it? they only found one hence the disagreements about it being a different sub-species), the first thing I thought was "wouldn't it be interesting to have a much wider range of size in our society?"

Like in Lord of the Rings: you've got the diddy little hobbits, you've got normal-sized people and elves, then you've got gigantic 7 or 8-foot tall wizards. People of every size living together.

The range of size of people here in my office right now is quite broad, from 4'-zero to 6'7. Admittedly those two individuals are rather rare in their statures, I reckon about 80% of the remainder are in the 5'6-6'0 band, and the other 20% in the 6'-6'4 band. Very uninteresting.

But, imagine an even spread of adult heights from 3-foot up to 8-foot. Somehow that just seems far more interesting to me.
 
I don`t think we should call them Sub....species. It has connotations of communal shower blocks :!: There must be a better designation :?:
 
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