>may even have been more intelligent?

One might argue that painting ochre on cave walls is more intelligent (and culturally superior ) than painting radioactivity all over the sky, painting man-made carcinogens all over the ground, painting our insides with plastic, depleting - as rapidly as possible - resources future humans will need ... and all the 'clever' magic tricks we can beat our chests about.

'Modern' may turn out, one day, to be a darkly humorous pejorative.