It’s possible but far from inevitable without intervention. It seems a confluence of unlikely (and still debated) factors combined to make tool-wielding + symbolic reasoning + language + culture etc an evolutionarily winning strategy. This is sometimes called the cognitive niche. But most species reach an evolutionary local maximum where increased intelligence offers no further survival gains; for example, sharks and crocodiles have been relatively unchanged for millions of years.

I like this term "cognitive niche" a lot. The term "Evolutionary winning strategies" kind of implies an ordering, as if there was only one winner in the grand scheme of things. Humanity may seem like the apex predator on Earth but we live just where we live, in the circumstances we find ourselves in, that our genes have adapted to. In other circumstances, spaces or timescales, other lifeforms prevail. And on a cosmic scale, who knows...

I also imagine it's beneficial to

- have a body that can manipulate tools easily (octopus would fit this)

- have a long enough lifespan to be able to actually learn and discover

- live in an environment that supports primitive metalcasting, mining and agriculture to bootstrap your civilization

This is called uplifting, and it should be possible to do it in the 21st century by using genetic engineering to give creatures progressively bigger and better brains with each generation.

When a brain is of sufficient capacity for consciousness to emerge, we can begin to educate these sentients, and teach them all we know, leaving them to figure out how they can apply our knowledge to their perspective of the world, which is alien to us.

Octopus for instance may begin to construct tools that will allow for them to practice aquaculture and build more civilized social structures that move them away from hunter-gatherer lifestyles. When they are not farming, they could develop written language to record their history and debts. Surely if you checked back in tens of thousands of years you would find advanced cities and societies as complex as human ones, except entirely underwater with occasional structures breaking above the surface.

Other creatures like chimpanzees could be taught how to work with humans as a cheap form of labor, digging ditches or mining resources.

I think someone just did this to a monkey.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200618150301.h...

very cool. thanks for sharing.