That number – 40,000 – is as totemic to Neanderthal specialists as that better known figure, 65 million, is to dinosaur fanciers.Ī poster for the 1953 film The Neanderthal Man. They died out, it appears, 40,000 years ago. The past few years have seen an abundance of works of popular science about a variety of human beings who once inhabited Eurasia: “Neanderthals”. But what if it’s too late? Can there be advocates for the extinct? The point of the advocacy is to prevent their extinction. But what all these cases all have in common is that the objects of concern are still alive, if only just. The underdog needn’t be human: there are species of insect, even of fungi, that have their advocates. Sometimes, it is a language down to its last native speakers. Sometimes, it is a tribe of Indigenous people whose land and health are imperilled. Sometimes, it is a nation, threatened by a larger neighbour or by the rising sea. Sometimes, the underdog is an individual – a runt of a boxer, say. There’s a human type we’ve all met: people who find a beleaguered underdog to stick up for.
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