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Illegal Beings: Human Clones
No, but we could be
SC ( 02/23/2004, 15:42:57 )The idea that humans once reproduced asexually wouldn't be called a theory in the way that scientists use the term; there's not enough evidence behind it. If all humans once reproduced exclusively through cloning, and then sex suddenly came along, the event would probably be traceable as a sudden increase in the rate of change in people's DNA. If people were introduced as clones of inhabitants from some alien world, then they wouldn't bear such a great genetic resemblance to all the other animals on the earth. Humanity's distant evolutionary ancestors were asexual, and some complex animals still reproduce by cloning, parthenogenesis, and similar processes (some types of snakes, for instance). Life as a whole has traded immortality for sex and greater intelligence (although people and some animals have since found ways to live longer), so the Eden story is a metaphor for evolution in some ways, in that all life is descended from other forms of life that once reproduced asexually. I think stories of decline symbolize the changes people go through as they live their lives. We start out as a few cells that could become anything and go on reproducing themselves forever under the right conditions, but we gradually lose the capacity to repair ourselves, we become sexual, we become intelligent, and we become capable of choosing between good and evil. There are probably myths from several cultures that play with the idea that the world is a larger version of the individual, or that the course of humanity's development mirrors the course of development of a single person.There was a scientific variation on this theme at one time, although you'll have to ask Libfemme what it was called. It was the idea that an embryo repeats its evolutionary history as it matures, since a human embryo looks like other forms of life at various stages. The idea is no longer scientific "state of the art." However, we do still have genes in common with other living things that reproduce asexually.Stories and myths inspire scientific investigation. In fact, the ways in which stories might be scientifically viable tend to be tested first, so practically every idea presented in story form resembles a scientific theory to some degree. However, the two are never going to match up perfectly, if only because they attempt to describe what we imagine to be the truth in different ways.Some stories also match certain theories better than others. A utopia achieved through cloning would be more likely to resemble the stories at the end of the Bible than those at the beginning. The benefits of cloning won't be achieved by returning to a state of innocence; we'll have to make choices between good and evil in order to realize its benefits. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve start reproducing sexually only after they have obtained the knowledge of good and evil and left the garden; asexual reproduction and the capacity to make moral decisions never coexist. Science says much the same thing: we know of no intelligent, moral creature from the past that reproduced asexually.Various groups who want to better their place in society have tried to rewrite stories of a bygone golden age to their benefit. Feminists, for instance, have imagined a time in prehistory in which matriarchal societies were the norm. Ultimately, though, I think it is self-defeating to imagine that one's utopia existed in the past. We can do more good by creating what ought to be than by denying that something never was.
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