[dheera]

I wonder how society would behave if those homonids were still around today.

A lot of society norms are based on our intelligence levels being remarkably approximately equal across all of our species. What if there existed a bunch of beings on Earth that were somewhere in-between a human and a monkey in intelligence, cognitive, and language abilities?

Would they go to school and be a part of the economy and job market, but with some kind of "no hominid left behind" program? Or would they be pets and get free food and rent in return for being cute? Or would they have their own hamlets and kingdoms and fight with our high-tech cities and countries?

[AceJohnny2]

Frankly, they'd either be exterminated, or slaves.

Extermination is likely because humans generally don't like competition. Just look at all the other apex predators/megafauna that have disappeared (or practically so) when humans showed up.

Otherwise, humanity's extensive history of slavery of anything we can de-humanize would apply to any survivors.

[edgyquant]

Not sure why you think dehumanization was a prerequisite for slavery.

[TechBro8615]

I can see the argument that it's definitionally impossible to enslave someone without dehumanizing them, if you believe that certain inalienable freedoms are part of being human, and thus you cannot take them away from someone without dehumanizing them.

But if by "dehumanization" you really mean "racist," then yes indeed, slavery was originally based more on generic power imbalances (prisoners of war, or offspring of existing slaves) than any racial component. The racist aspect of slavery only became prominent with the emergence of colonialism and exposure of Europeans to "the new world." I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that the ancients felt worthy of mentioning - after all, Rome was an empire spanning many disparate races and cultures. Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry any social implications"). I'd be curious to read more about it though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_in_ancient_Roman_...

[wsgeorge]

> I'm not sure that race was even an attribute that the ancients felt worthy of mentioning

> Wikipedia [0] seems to agree ("skin tones did not carry any social implications")

When I read this comment (before your edit), I was a bit surprised, since ethnicity and "blood/familial" relations were absolutely huge in ancient Rome.

I generally use a definition of race that's much broader than skin tone, and I see it as interchangeable with loosely defined ethnicity and cultural background.

[TechBro8615]

Oh they definitely had enslavement from birth. But generally the original reason for enslaving the parents/grandparents was because they were a prisoner of war, or ended up on the wrong end of some power imbalance - it's unlikely they were enslaved for any reason directly related to their physical attributes like skin tone.

(I guess you could argue that an empire that invaded another culture/nation/territory and then enslaved its people was effectively enslaving them based on something akin to "race," but that argument is slightly weakened by the fact that the Roman army didn't only conquer "barbarians" but also went to war against their contemporary civilizational peers, often driven by familial disputes between emperors.)

So while enslaving someone from birth is undoubtedly bad, I'm not sure it's fair to characterize it as enslavement based on racial attributes, if the slave's ancestor was originally enslaved for reasons unrelated to race. Like, I guess you could call it racism if you squint, but only in the sense that skin color (or whatever other physical attributes you might associate with race) is an inherited characteristic, which seems like self-referential reasoning.

[wsgeorge]

Ah yeah, thinking about it a little more carefully, I see your point, especially on the topic of slavery.

Although the ancient Romans were absolutely big on ethnic/racial discrimination, the specific institution of slavery was not based on this. And their strong sense of the rule of law allowed for more civic forms of discrimination. For example, Germanic peoples weren't enslaved because they were non-Italian. They were just denied citizenship and its privileges, etc.

[famouswaffles]

Dehumanization is a prerequisite for slavery. It just doesn't have to be grounded in "race"

[cmrdporcupine]

Arguably the specific form of racist dehumanization and invention of race itself came about as ideological justification for an already existing slave practice.

e.g. the Romans kept slaves on a huge scale, but never bothered with a racist ideology to justify it. They just dehumanized almost anyone, their ethical system permitted blatant "might makes right." But the nominally Christian ethical system predominant in our most recent western society required a "reason" why slavery was permissible, and so we got the invention of race.

[fb03]

aka minimum wage employment

[cmrdporcupine]

This whole idea of classifying by intellectual ability, or even thinking we can measure it along some single axis... is going to look mighty quaint once our machines truly and fully surpass us on that axis.

Wouldn't it be nice if Neanderthal, Erectus, Denisovan and Naledi was with us today but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"?

My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above. But holy crap do they have better physical / situational awareness; their minds are incredibly sharper than mine for what's happening in terms of motion, sound, smell, etc. and they surely get as much or more pleasure/stimulation out of running through my field after a rabbit or frisbee than I do writing Rust or making comments on hackernews...

I was talking to my son in the car last night about this -- in and around the whole world of "races" (elves, dwarves, etc.) in Tolkien-esque fantasy novels, D&D, Dwarf Fortress, etc. In a way this is almost like a fantastical projection of a world where other Hominin species co-exist.

Our yearning for fantastical elves to live along side us might actually be a feeling of loneliness knowing that we are the only species of our kind left.

[dheera]

> but we didn't see them as "stupider forms of us" but "intelligent in different way"

> My two border collies are clearly less "intelligent" than me on something like the axis I refer to above

I very much agree with intelligence being multidimensional and that humans are largely similar in general intelligence level, just that everyone has different intelligences.

I'm not sure that's true of a different species though. Intelligence is the evolved trait of homo sapiens. I wouldn't call a baboon, rattlesnake, or jellyfish "intelligent but in a different way". Those creatures have other evolutionary reasons for success, but not intelligence.

[neovialogistics]

If you're interested in alternate history and have a login for alternatehistory.com, there's an incomplete but moderately good write-up of exactly this.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/age-of-near-e...

[AlecSchueler]

Not quite the same but we do actually have populations of people with significantly reduced capacities, such as those with Down's Syndrome. I'm not sure how it is everywhere but in Western Europe there's generally quite a bit of effort put in by families, carers, charities and businesses to give them a sense of life in society.

[mkl]

Harry Turtledove's book of short stories A Different Flesh is based on this idea, though with homo erectus, not homo naledi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Different_Flesh

[booleandilemma]

If I know anything about humans, we'd probably try to have sex with them.

[tmtvl]

Or eat them. Or both.