When do we cross the line from 'animal' to 'person?'

[Severan]

I posted this article here a while back. Yeah, I'm kinda reposting it because I'm coming at it from a more philosophical perspective.

http://www.completegenomics.net/adventur...thal-baby/

The idea is that they're planning on creating a neanderthal baby. The question I want to ask, is this going to be a person? Surely he wouldn't have a normal life, regardless of how psychologically developed he is. The thing is, though, if it were just some ancient species of monkey, we wouldn't hesitate to put him in a cage, check his blood on a damn near daily basis, scan and test him for pretty much everything under the sun and, eventually, disect him and his brain.

But, in a very real sense, all of us are just a mutated breed of monkey. So, let's suppose we could go back and get samples from different time periods and clone babies from all along the evolutionary tree from apes to modern humans; where would we draw the line between beast and man?

This is a very interesting topic. We may be animals ourselves, but the line is intelligence. It's very hard to tell what that line is. Some say that is was when we first harnessed fire, others say that it's when we first made clothing. It's difficult to look at that line. I would say that it was when we first became rebellious of nature. You see, there was a species nicknamed "Lucy" that was when we "Rebelled". In the African savanna, there used to be TONS of trees. There was a whole bunch of forests, but that treeline was slowly fading away. The apes from where we came from lived in those trees that were left. There simply wasn't enought time to adapt. Instead, this species had to use that head of theirs. Most animals would just stay in the tree, but they needed food. So, "Lucy" jumped down from the tree to get food for itself, but it quickly became frightened and went back up. This "line" of yours may be wider than you think. My personal opinion is that the line starts with Lucy and ends with harnessing the power of fire. You see, any animal can become naturally curious, and jump off a tree to get food, but it takes a really brave creature to pick up a branch that's just been struck by lightning. In the middle of this line is what scientists call "The missing link". We have no idea when we entered the intelligence inevitability zone. All that I'm certain of is that when that first human decided to touch something hot, we were on our way to being more powerful than nature itself.