Deep significance

I'm currently fascinated by the Silurian Hypothesis and its ramifications. For another link on the topic, see below! I've known about "deep time", the old age of the Earth and evolution since I was a kid, but I just realized that I never *really* got it...

Numbers like "5 million years ago", "55 million years ago" and so on, are just that. Numbers. If something happened after the Age of Dinosaurs, it feels "recent", somehow. Which, ahem, it wasn't...

The most intriguing aspect of the Silurian Hypothesis is that if an advanced industrial civilization existed in the distant past, say 55 million years ago, we might never find any direct traces of it (such as ruins or fossils), not even if it survived far longer than ours is likely to endure. However, we could perhaps trace it indirectly by chemical anomalies in thin layers of sediment rock. Yes, that would be pollution and man-made climate change...

Ironically, if our global civilization somehow evolves into a sustainable Green utopia, we might not leave any discernable traces at all, even if such a civilization lasts far longer than one based on heavy resource exploitation and pollution. 

"Deep time" has obvious implications for religion. Once you *really* grasp it, it becomes difficult to believe that the universe was created by an anthropomorphic deity and that the end goal of evolution is Homo sapiens. But it also makes it difficult to believe the Western Idea of Progress. Chances are that we will simply become another "event" or blip in geological time. Just as (at least hypothetically) an even more advanced species than ours might have existed in the past...and left no trace of its existence, or some hard to detect traces revealing how it destroyed itself. 

No philosophy which doesn't take this into account can be taken seriously anymore. 

However, in slightly unrelated news, there is also hope. I happen to think intelligent species can exist even without a "civilization" or high technology. Only our anthropocentric thinking makes us oblivous to the possibility. Why *should* highly evolved whales leave the ocean, or highly evolved ravens stop flying? 

Perhaps intelligence is all around us as we speak. We're simply not smart enough to notice... 

Are we Earth's only civilization?