I recently finished a rather interesting book, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, which is an exploration of what would happen to the world if humans were to disappear suddenly or over a very short period of time. At one point, he mentions the conditions that probably encouraged our ancestors to diverge behaviorally from the rest of the primates (thus encouraging those traits that led to [i]homo sapiens[/i)] and whether another species could follow in a similar direction once we're out of the way. A very worthwhile volume.

He also provides an answer to the creationist question of why there are still apes and why they did not also develop an intelligence similar to ours. ...

I recently finished a rather interesting book, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, which is an exploration of what would happen to the world if humans were to disappear suddenly or over a very short period of time. At one point, he mentions the conditions that probably encouraged our ancestors to diverge behaviorally from the rest of the primates (thus encouraging those traits that led to [i]homo sapiens[/i)] and whether another species could follow in a similar direction once we're out of the way. A very worthwhile volume.

He also provides an answer to the creationist question of why there are still apes and why they did not also develop an intelligence similar to ours. It's too involved to go into here, and I would rather that others go to the source and read the book for themselves.