Posted: Jun 12, 2017 3:42 am
Rumraket wrote:
I don't actually know it to be the case that only one species has mapped it's own genome. For the species that live on Earth, sure. But I don't know whether it has happened elsewhere in the universe.
There were quite a number of Homo species extant at any one period in time. Unfortunately, none of them still remain because they were out-competed by Homo sapiens. We don't know exactly what happened to those other species but it remains for certain that none of them have survived to potentially develop genome reading technology.
So there were other intelligent, tool-using species of human on the planet but they're all gone now. In other words, shit happens to species and the vast majority of them go extinct.
My question therefore, is: Given that the other intelligent hominid species are all extinct and given that other species on this planet do not occupy the same ecological niche as hominids, what basis do you have for expecting that another intelligent, tool-using species would be anything other than the remotest of possibilities?