Is there ANY possibility that this happened?
Is there any possible chance that there was an intelligent race on earth millions of years ago that got wiped out before the dinosaurs even existed. seeing as the earth is billions of years old, I'm just wondering why it could not have happened.
flobadob Sat 23/08/08 21:20
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There is pretty significant scientific evidence that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and life (that can replicate itself) started as soon as 700 million years after that.
We can prove this with fossils of many types but here is not the slightest hint that an intellegent race ever existed, if there ever was it surely would have left some evedence behind - in your question I presume you mean a race that had imagination etc.
Intelligence is a loose word in evolution. Ants can form a formidable colony capable of overcoming almost any animal, yet individually they have a very simple brain. Simplicity is economic in evolution so they are very intelligent.
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The earth still awaits the rise of an intelligent species. Trouble is that we humans have made such a mess there is little chance of intelligence ever developing.
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It could not really have happened.
Life just doesn't keep popping up out of nowhere, the chances of it happening are slim, but we know it did happen and life came out of nonlife. This began the chain of events that led to modern intelligent humans. It is very weird that we have an intelligent race like humans around, but we do. There are so many other ways of conquering a niche, without intelligence (other animals do this well) that intelligence has to come about through a weird interaction of genetic mutation, social living, and probably tool use.
It takes so LONG to get this kind of thing together that it's really really unlikely that it happened already in our planet's life.
However given the number of stars and planets in the universe, and its age, it's really UNLIKELY that it didn't /doesn't happen a lot elsewhere.
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In terms of comaparative evolutionary studies we have a fairly decent idea of what we mean by intelligence and we put ants down very very low in that chain.
Humans have some aspects of their intelligence that other animals have in no way whatsoever, like metacognition and Theory of Mind.
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