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Originally Posted by greenfeather
Well I've been away from this forum for several months and it's great to some back & see a fun thread.
It seems everyone is defining civilization as making Stuff. I think that's a narrow definition. Someone mentioned finding a stone knife next to a dino fossil and that's an example of the problem. Dinos obviously have claws and don't need stone knives. The only reason humans need Stuff is because, as someone else noted, we have almost no physical attributes to help us survive.
So, other animals don't have cars & guns so we call them stupid. However scientists have found 'languages' in lots of other animals including prairie dogs. Animals have all kinds of ways of communicating with each other and detecting information. For all we know there are other species on this earth, in the past or on other planets, that have sophisticated communication abilities we can't even imagine. None of this would show up in the fossil record and we'd never have a clue that an advanced civilization existed.
I'm especially thinking about this in connection with all those planets we're finding that wouldn't support fire, combustion, ironmongering and all those civilized things.
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my bold
First, welcome back greenfeather!
Second, well, if nothing shows up in the fossil record, and past or current animals have communication methods we can not image or detect, then we are out of the realm of science. You can speculate that penguins are having conversations about seven-dimensional geometry using pulsed graviton beams, but so what.
I also don't think that communication, in and of itself, makes for intelligence and/or a civilization. For example, bees and ants have systems for communications among their members, both I don't think that either are intelligent or have civilizations. What's the difference? Where do you draw the line? I'm not sure. Human civilization and ant "civilization" seem fundamentally different to me, but I'm not sure how to define it.