re: Whales have been around for about 30 million years
I won't say underwater technological civilizations are impossible, but I think fire and agriculture were pretty big foundations for ours. While agriculture would be possible underwater there are much bigger things than birds to fend off three dimensionally. Molluscs related to the Octopus rulled the seas hundreds of millions of years ago yet never developed technology. The stagnation in the whale family provides further support to doubt sea based technology can be self derived. I can see both whales and the more advanced Molluscs being "uplifted" however.
Regards,
Mark
