“The last Neanderthal”. Photo: PaulSuprun - Павел Супрун
We think of extinction events in terms of populations, in terms of species but we forget to acknowledge that extinction can happen to people. We forget the minds of the hominids that lived and died unless we’re debating skills and cranial capacities. Neandertals were highly encephalised and I would argue fully capable of a large suite of deep and complex feelings. We’re only now beginning to acknowledge that species other than humans can feel complex emotions; Neandertals certainly did.
So, at some point, perhaps in a glacial refugia ~28kya, I wonder about a family of eight individuals that slowly dwindled into extinction. Three died of old age, two during a hunt, one of sickness and one during childbirth. Leaving only one man, a single intelligent individual who had watched his population decline, who had heard stories from his nan about way back when there were more of their kind, before even she was born. But he doesn’t hope to find others like him anymore amongst the tall, lanky newcomers with their foreign technology that now populate the land. He is 30 and has migrated his whole life across this territory and he hasn’t seen another group like his since he was a child. And now he’s old and alone and knows better than to hope so he sits down with his toolkit and cuts a few pieces of leather off his tunic and plaits them to pass the time and remembers when he was young, when his granddad taught him how to knap and he wonders who will bury him like he buried his own.