Other sentient species in Earth's past

[w33t]

It is hypothesized that at one point the entire homosapien species may have had population numbers below the 1,000s. One bad flu strain and we may never have gotten past that number - we may never have even left any evidence behind that we were here. And yet, those ancient ancestors of ours (assuming you are a human who is reading this;) ) were every bit as intelligent as you and I. Bring one of them forward in time and they could learn calculus, Java programming, how to do taxes maybe even.

 

So it tickles my mind, the notion, that at some point in Earth's past there may have been very small populations of some species that was intelligent, perhaps just as much as you and I, but which never made it past that population threshold.

 

What other kinds of animal besides primates could possibly harbor a species with comparible intelligence to our own?

 

Birds? African Greys are very smart, as are Ravens.

Sea Mammals? Perhaps there actually were aquatic apes: just not related to humans.

Pehaps some kind of cuttlefish.

[bascule]

I don't think we've found any fossils which had mental hardware anywhere approaching the hominid

[silkworm]

Well, the hobbit people are hominid and recent. Outside of us and other primates are squids and dolphins (that I'm aware of). Nothing compared to us though.

[Pleiades]

I don’t want to be a semantics Nazi, but people always use the word ‘sentience’ incorrectly, so I have to point it out.

 

“Sentience is a capacity for basic consciousness—the ability to feel or perceive, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness.”

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

[Gilded]

For some reason this reminds me of Lovecraftian mythology where beings from distant worlds have lived in the Antarctic etc. way before man even came down from the tree. And before dinosaurs for that matter. However I wouldn't recommend digging around Antarctic if you're allergic to shoggoths. On a more serious note, if there was a species that fits your description it must have been pretty damn unlucky and secluded (as we haven't found any proof of such yet, as bascule said).

[ecoli]

It's not completely out of the realm of possibility, but we haven't found any fossilized evidence of such a thing. Or, if we have, perhaps we have grossly misinterpreted the data.

[w33t]

I don't mean to imply that I think there is any evidence for such a crazy thing as what I propose. It's more of a "what if", which is both the least scientific thing you can ask, and also the question that has led to so many breakthroughs I would think.

 

Personally I think that in order for a species as intelligent, and intelligent in the way that we are (whatever that means exactly ) would have ancestors much like the homo's before us (sniker if you want, I think that's a valid contraction).

 

After all, even if homosapien had completely died out I think there would have been some evidence left over from our close relatives. And they had quite impressive intelligences themselves - considering the tools and weapons neanderthan and erectis used.

 

It is interesting that erectis, or even australopithecus, are completely vanished. It is somewhat unfortunate, that the gap between human intelligence and that of our closest relative differ by such a seemingly large margin. Well, at least in such a seeminly large way - linguistically especially.

 

But still I wonder - if during the time of the dinosaurs there were some intelligent animal who surpassed all modern species in cleverness (perhaps with the exception of us, of course), but which vanished without, as they say, a trace.

 

certainly darwinian life is capable of our Intelligence, are we really the first example of it's pinnacle?