Civilization has only been around for a mere six millenia or so,
at most. The fire that Thales started got stamped out within a
few hundred years, and only really got going again some three or
four hundred years ago. When you're talking about an evolutionary
process going on by information transfer (with the error-correction
mechanisms being made up as they go along!) among a bunch of
slow-breeding mammals, these things take time. Especially when each
stellar advance in the process has been doomed to rot or burn after
just a few decades of activity.
That I'm in this for the long haul is one reason why I'm an immortalist.
-- Eric Watt Forste ++ arkuat@pobox.com ++ http://www.pobox.com/~arkuat/