alt Hacker NewsIt is possible it is just time. Modern humans are considered to have existed for 300k~ years. Civilizations are about 6k years old.
So who knows. Maybe if you gave them an extra 10k years, they would have achived "civilization". It is not much for the scale of human existance. But it is longer than any of our civilizations has existed for.
For humans, I wonder if population size and density is also a factor.
That is, if there’s a critical mass and population size.