jwu

Now' date=' they had 165 million years to walk the Earth and evolve into smarter creatures but they didn't. As far as we can tell, all they did was eat, sleep and breed. Not a bad life - except having to run for it every now and again - but why didn't they gain intelligence? The only knowledge of fire they had was that lightning and lava made it (and that it was hot).

 

Humans (Homo Sapiens) have only really been around for 200,000 years and within 100 years, look how far we have advanced. Within 60 years we went from first flight to outer space. Look in that tiny space of time, how we went from primate intelligence to that of today. [/quote']There seems to be a major misconception! You imply that whenever there is a new species, that species' intellectual development begins from scratch, but that is not so. Each species builds upon its predecessor, and there isn't even a clear line of what constitutes a species. Species depend on an arbitrarily set frame of reference.

 

Us humans have gone through 65 million years more evolution than dinosaurs have - just not all of that in form of humans.

 

 

Moreover, there is always a "first time", there always has to be a species that is the first to aquire a certain characteristic. And naturally that species then will ask itself, "why are we the only one?" (if it's capable of this kind of self reflection).

 

So if the evolution of intelligence is a given, then there had to be a species to be the first to evolve it - and that happened to be us humans. Well...or dolphins, possibly.