How do we know that there wasn’t an intelligent species living here on earth before humans?
In: Earth Science
There were. Before home sapiens (humans) there were homo erectus and neanderthals, and before that homo habilis, which was almost 2.8 million years ago. Before that there were Australopithecus who used stone tools over 3 million years ago.
We know this because we’ve found evidence of their tool use, either fossils directly holding tools or things created that could not be done without the use of tools such as stone etchings.
Going back further it depends what you mean by intelligent. I think we largely categorise intelligent life as that which can learn and understand things. A lot of early life would fit into this category. If you’re talking about tool creation and use, which is what gave humans their advantage over other creatures, that’s not solely an intelligence thing but also down to us being lucky and having opposable thumbs.
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