>Our type of society is probably much much rarer because you need access to mineral and energy deposits to go through each technological phase. For example, because of all the mining we’ve done, if humanity were to disappear it’s highly likely the Earth would not sustain another technological society because all the “easy to get to” deposits of crucial metals & things like oil are gone and there’s no way to bootstrap a technological society (it’s possible other kinds of resources could be developed to build other kinds of technology so who knows).

As I recall-though it's been many years-this was something of a premise in Farmer's Riverworld series. Once you've taken the first pass though historical mineral etc. resources, you don't really get a second pass.