That's entirely possible. But sapience isn't necessarily adaptive. Ancient humans combined sapience with other traits like endurance, dexterity, overhand throwi

That's entirely possible. But sapience isn't necessarily adaptive. Ancient humans combined sapience with other traits like endurance, dexterity, overhand throwing ability, and social instincts to carve out an ecological niche long enough to reap the benefits of culture. Removing any one of those factors would have made prehistoric humans unviable. If I was going to bet on non-human sapience, though, I'd go with crows. Intelligence seems to be most effective if you combine it with social instincts to create culture. Crows do this already.