Regenerating a Mammoth for $10 Million.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: November 19, 2008
Scientists are talking for the first time about the old idea of resurrecting extinct species as if this staple of science fiction is a realistic possibility, saying that a living mammoth could perhaps be regenerated for as little as $10 million.
The same technology could be applied to any other extinct species from which one can obtain hair, horn, hooves, fur or feathers, and which went extinct within the last 60,000 years, the effective age limit for DNA.
...
"The full genome of the Neanderthal, an ancient human species probably driven to extinction by the first modern humans that entered Europe some 45,000 years ago, is expected to be recovered shortly. If the mammoth can be resurrected, the same would be technically possible for Neanderthals.
"But the process of genetically engineering a human genome into the Neanderthal version would probably raise many objections, as would several other aspects of such a project. “Catholic teaching opposes all human cloning, and all production of human beings in the laboratory, so I do not see how any of this could be ethically acceptable in humans,” said Richard Doerflinger, an official with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
"Dr. Church said there might be an alternative approach that would “alarm a minimal number of people.” The workaround would be to modify not a human genome but that of the chimpanzee, which is some 98 percent similar to that of people. The chimp’s genome would be progressively modified until close enough to that of Neanderthals, and the embryo brought to term in a chimpanzee.
“The big issue would be whether enough people felt that a chimp-Neanderthal hybrid would be acceptable, and that would be broadly discussed before anyone started to work on it,” Dr. Church said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/science/20mammoth.html?_r=1&ref=science

Though Neanderthals were undoubtedly thinking creatures, the ethical questions about cloning humans might be somewhat muted by recent studies that suggest that Neanderthals were genetically distinct from modern humans:

Neandertals Not among Our Ancestors, Study Suggests.
By Sarah Graham
May 14, 2003 in Archaeology & Paleontology
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=neandertals-not-among-our [abstract]

For info on the capabilities of the Neanderthals see:

Once We Were Not Alone.
by Ian Tattersall
Paintings by Jay H. Matternes
Scientific American, January 2000
http://www.ucd.ie/artspgs/langevo/earlyhominids.pdf [free full text]

Another reasoning creature to interact with might provide us clues about how to communicate with other intelligent species in the SETI search.

Bob Clark