Background to my question:
We carry on with a certain arrogance and vanity, secure in our knowledge that we are the pinnacle of biological evolution; that nothing on this planet has ever approached our sophistication, and after we're gone nothing will again.
But consider:
- Endothermic terrestrial vertebrates rocked up at the end of the Triassic, and then partied for 135MY before the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event
- 135MY could contain 27 independent monkey-to-moon cycles given the rate of Hominini progress these last 5MY
- If a Chicxulub-sized event stuck April 24th, 1616 CE (the day after Shakespeare died), what traces of humankind would be available to our cockroach overlord archeologists 65MY hence?
- How advanced must any civilization become before imprinting itself permanently on the planet?
Now, clearly dinosaurs were never driving around in Teslas, and we won't find their footprints on the moon. BUT, 400 years ago you wouldn't have seen us doing that either. We did, however, have Calculus, Romeo & Juliet, and ice cream.
The question:
Is the fossil record granular enough to describe an "intelligent species", or could some small population with the following characteristics come and go, many times over, and be lost permanently over the intervening 65MY?
- Are self aware
- Possess conceptual thinking
- Practice agriculture / hedge against scarcity
- Create expressions analogous to poetry / philosophy / allegory
If culture is fundamentally more advantageous than non-culture, why would it arise only now, after 200MY?
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