Anyway, there's nothing "scientific" to discuss here. Certainly, there could not have been any ancient metal-using civilization more industrially or technologically advanced than modern ones, due to the lack of the surface metal element depletion, which we observe everywhere humans have used metal tools.
Contemplating a civilization of minds that are abstractly philosophically or psychologically "better" than ours is pure speculation. I can imagine it, it's not absurd, it's just not really measurable or demonstrable.
If I were going to speculate though, I would say that it seems likely to me that there would have been many ancient people who were more mentally agile and culturally actualized than most alive today.
>>11741698What does this even really mean? Obviously there were none that left behind written works or such massive stoneworks, so "the level of Sumer or Egypt" must mean something to do with social, cultural, and philosophical development while lacking the specific technologies (metal tools and writing) that we associate with the dawn of "civilizations."So basically, it's just an admission that those technologies are not in fact what makes a society a "civilization," which I think is a more helpful way to think about it. Of course there were advanced prehistoric civilizations, they must have just been "advanced" in things that don't leave an archaeological record.
