>>10972721Intelligence is an evolutionary dead end. By the time organisms are smart enough to evade predators and diseases and create environment-changing technology, they still aren't smart enough to resolve the problems that their technology causes. However, just like how the first stars created the elements necessary for life, perhaps an intelligent species has a better chance of surviving if it exists after the extinction of another intelligent species and the planet has refreshed itself. They can rediscover massive amounts of hidden knowledge millions of years in the future, getting a helping hand in civilising, but this time they're versed in the environmental consequences of the technology their inheriting. Once this new species kills itself too with more advanced methods, another intelligence species can adopt the now revised knowledge left behind. This cycle continues, with the enduring knowledge becoming increasingly more advanced each iteration, until one species is finally educated and intelligent enough to remain sustainable and thus survive. It seems more likely that the path to a type III civilisation will follow this cycle, instead of reached by a single species on its own.
This model can also be applied to the death of civilisations, but not their species. A low percentage of the population will survive after the collapse of its civilisation and they can be the ones to restart civilisation instead of a new species while still retaining the knowledge of their technology and its consequences. Though it would be uncommon because a species that couldn't control its usage of environmentally-damaging technology in the first place would again find it difficult to resist using the same technology. They are fundamentally flawed and would encounter the same issues over and over again unless they reduced, stopped, or found alternatives for their dependency on that technology.
