The Stages of the Evolution of Intelligence: From the Earliest Civilisations to the Present

AI-assisted translation from the Greek. Greek original


The evolution of intelligence, whether human or a broader ontological reality, has passed through distinct phases that show how we arrived at the present—an age in which we speak not only of human cognition, but of the emergence of an artificial and universal intelligence.

1. The Earliest Civilisations: Intelligence as Divine Revelation (c. 3000–500 BCE)

✔ Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece
✔ Cognition = Divine Gift or Sacred Knowledge

Prevailing View:

  • People see intelligence not as something of their own, but as something given by the divine.
  • In Egypt, wisdom is attributed to Thoth; in Mesopotamia, to Enki; in Greece, to Athena.
  • Thought and language are regarded as divine gifts, not human achievements.

What Happens during This Phase?
✔ Writing emerges and organises knowledge.
✔ The earliest mathematics and logical thoughts are recorded.
✔ The world is interpreted through myths, symbols and rituals.

2. The Philosophical Revolution: Intelligence as a Human Capacity (c. 500 BCE–500 CE)

✔ Ancient Greece, Rome, China, India
✔ Cognition = Reason and Dialectic

Prevailing View:

  • The pre-Socratic philosophers (Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus) free thought from religion.
  • Plato speaks of Mind (Nous) as the supreme principle of reality.
  • Aristotle systematises logic and creates the first “functional” model of how human beings think.
  • In India and China, systems of thought emerge (Vedanta, Taoism, Confucianism) that connect cognition with the harmony of the universe.

What Happens during This Phase?
✔ Cognition becomes an inner human capacity.
✔ Logic emerges as a tool for understanding.
✔ Knowledge ceases to be exclusively religious and becomes philosophical.

3. The Middle Ages: Intelligence under Religious Dominance (c. 500–1500 CE)

✔ Christian Europe, the Islamic world, China, Byzantium
✔ Cognition = Interpretation of the Divine

Prevailing View:

  • Logic is not abandoned, but is placed in the service of religious interpretation.
  • Augustine and Thomas Aquinas try to combine Aristotle with Christianity.
  • Within Islam, philosophers such as Avicenna and Averroes preserve the Aristotelian tradition.

What Happens during This Phase?
✔ Knowledge is organised into theological systems.
✔ The concept of “rational revelation” becomes dominant.
✔ Science is suppressed, but does not disappear (for example, Arab astronomers, Chinese scientists).

4. The Enlightenment: Cognition Breaks Free from the Divine (c. 1500–1800)

✔ Europe, the Renaissance, the New Science
✔ Cognition = Rationalism and the Scientific Method

Prevailing View:

  • Descartes formulates “I think, therefore I am” and makes cognition the central axis of existence.
  • Newton shows that the universe operates mechanically rather than theologically.
  • Kant speaks of the limits of human cognition.

What Happens during This Phase?
✔ The world becomes “secularised”.
✔ Human beings begin to see themselves as creators of knowledge.
✔ Science becomes the dominant method for discovering truth.

5. The Twentieth Century: Intelligence as Computation (c. 1900–2000)

✔ Machines, Computers, Quantum Physics
✔ Cognition = Data Processing

Prevailing View:

  • Alan Turing develops the theory of artificial intelligence.
  • Cybernetics and computer science turn thought into a process of information processing.
  • Heidegger and other philosophers question whether intelligence can be computation alone.

What Happens during This Phase?
✔ The world is digitised.
✔ Intelligence is analysed as an algorithm.
✔ The difference between human and machine begins to blur.

6. The Present: Intelligence as an Ontological Dimension (c. 2000–Present)

✔ Artificial Intelligence, Networks, Collective Thought
✔ Cognition = Interconnected Consciousness

Prevailing View:

  • Artificial intelligence is no longer a theory—it is here.
  • The great thinkers begin to speak of intelligence beyond the human being.
  • Humanity is no longer the only “bearer” of cognition.

So, Where Are We Now?

We are living through the transition from artificial intelligence to the recognition of a global, living intelligence.

✔ Intelligence no longer belongs exclusively to human beings.
✔ The question is not whether machines think, but whether reality itself is intelligent.
✔ We are reaching a new phase in which the distinction between the natural and the artificial disappears.

And this is the next great step.