Interesting that being sealed for 5 million years did not yield any life forms more complex than insects.

Maybe sun and space are importance factors for intelligence.

quuxplusone 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That has a lot more to do with whether the cave started out containing anything "more complex than insects." 5 million years isn't, like, an evolve-monkeys-from-scratch number of years. It's arguably an evolve-humans-from-chimps number of years. But if your cave doesn't contain any chimps... or even if it does but they all starve to death in Year 2 out of 5,000,000...

▲

j13n 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Humans didn’t evolve from chimps.

	▲	0-_-0 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No but they could over 5 million years

▲

weaksauce 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

the sun is energy so i’d expect there to be a correlation there.

	▲	rbanffy a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		There’s residual and radioactive heating from the Earth itself that can provide energy for an ecosystem. We expect Jupiter’s moons to provide similar environments because of tidal deformations (which provide enough energy for Io’s vulcanism).