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I was chatting with a scientist friend a while ago and were discussing how intelligent porpoises appear to be and how they have such large brains. I asked him why porpoises hadn't progressed further in terms of the things humans can do. His answer was that porpoises can't create and control fire. It seemed a like a reasonable answer and I'll offer it to the thread. We became humans when we learned to create and control fire.
Fire, specifically, is an example of controlling one's environment and, in this case, through chemical manipulation. Dolphins can't do this in the water, obviously. But could they understand the ramifications of fire if they were land-dwelling? Who knows. It's been shown they have language, so they can probably pass on knowledge... but do they understand things like "shelter" and "warmth" and "cook" like we do?