The Inevitable History Of Intelligent Life

Watching the 3-part Nova mini-series, "Becoming Human", I was struck by a pattern that I imagine must repeat itself every time some form of intelligent life springs up on a planet somewhere. I think it must always go roughly like this:

1. Very primitive life forms have been evolving for millions of years, with one (or more) eventually gaining some advantage that allows it to begin down the path to intelligence (larger or more sophisticated brain, opposable thumbs, geographic imperative, lucky mutation at the cellular level)
2. Early versions of this species diversify (naturally) until one version is able to dominate (Homo Sapiens versus Neanderthals and others)
3. Dominant version obliterates all other versions, probably unwittingly (since intelligence is still very nascent at this point)
4. Primitive spoken language begins to appear and be utilized by at least some members of species (this may come back at 2. or 3.)
5. Language diversifies (naturally) due to geographic separations and the lack of any means (or perceived need) to keep it consistent; there are no written or distributed forms of language just yet
6. Language begins enabling storytelling, which encourages the development and elaboration of imagination
7. Creation stories begin to appear and diversify (naturally) as an example of where imagination leads one
8. Cults form around various creation stories and groups attempt to promote their own creation story version over everyone else's
9. Battles rage between groups separated by geography, language barriers, cultural norms or even creation story beliefs
10. Technology continues to improve at each step, thanks to adaptive nature of intelligent life and its use of language - now including written versions - to retain ideas and learning across generations
    
11. The scientific method (hypothesize, experiment, observe, measure, adapt conclusions) slowly begins to win favour over all other approaches because of its repeatable, demonstrable nature and the tangible benefits its use provide; creation story cults try to stop its progress at every turn as it's seen as a threat to their unprovable beliefs
12. Science eventually progresses to the point of being able to study the past (through artifacts), at which point the creation story question becomes at least partially solvable
13. Members of the intelligent species have had at least thousands of generations to develop large and elaborate beliefs about their highly-favoured position in the universe, and therefore the "news" that they started off as lower lifeforms hits them particularly hard; angry denial follows on many fronts
14. Species eventually comes to grip with reality of situation and moves forward from there

It's just too bad that we're all living in Stage 13 and probably won't live nearly long enough to ever see Stage 14.