The only technical intelligence we know is Human - have a close look.
If you look at dolphins, they have complex social structures, as well as many other mammals too. Normally this revolves around a dominant (male or female) group or individual surrounded by subservient others, in a competitive group vs group environment.
If you look at us, or rather the genus homo, we have been around for over two million years. You could argue the first evidence of cities, a major hallmark of intelligence, was 9000 - 10000 years ago.
So there is a difference between intelligence and technical intelligence. It begs the question of: Why didn't dinosaurs, in their 250 million years, develop technical intelligence? Why don't dolphins now?
There is a theory that a solution to the Fermi Paradox may be that life might be abundant- indeed, it may be intelligent - however technical intelligence is so rare that it hasn't happened in the universe before we developed it. Looking at the only evidence, us, developing technical abilities after such a long time of being around lends credence to this theory.
So the chance of developing technical intelligence is almost zero if this postulate is true, and the only gauge of this is our own society. Thus there may be a few factors to develop such intelligence which is rare and not inevitable:
- Fire: although other species developed stone tools, only the homo genus developed fire. It was developed independently around a dozen times amongst 1,200,000 years, and only caught on relatively recently, around 400,000 years ago when it became mainstream. Without this development humans cannot disperse from its native environment, and it has been argued cannot create home groups.
- Inadequacies: Humans are not very physiologically adaptable. We can only withstand a limited temperature range, uncomfortable in the rain, eat only a minority of foods of certain types and texture, can't run fast, not particularly strong, can't fly and so on. Security is a major problem. These deficiencies have been argued to spur on intelligence by virtue we need to find ways to overcome them.
- Farming and Cities - We need farming to free up labour and thought to develop technical abilities, and cities are concurrent with complex social structures.
In your herd society, using the above one of the main problems is already you have a large group. Individuals in herds act in accordance with established rules, and distance themselves from others in the group according to these rules. They are not usually intelligent, and only react to their immediate surroundings which usually include others in the herd.
The herd 'reacts' to the environment usually by those at the outer edge, and migrates across environments to suit the best and ideal temperature, food and other requirements.
Therefore a key ingredient to the above definition of intelligence is removed - that of fire, it is not needed. Another ingredient - insecurity - is already dealt with by the protection of the herd, and the formation of cities is not necessary too, and therefore the development of farming.
For technical intelligence to occur in your herd society, according to the above definition, the herd needs to have a need for fire (perhaps for food), a need for farming (same) and a need for security (perhaps other herds that roam and conflict with these herds). A command structure is needed to retain knowledge and pass it down. It could be old to young, perhaps the older individuals are in the centre, which hold the knowledge, and younger more fit are at the edge.
Yet there also needs to be adversity - not just other conflicting herds, but where technical intelligence needs to be required. Ie- perhaps if there was acid rain, the only way a herd can survive is to erect structures to accommodate the herd, or fit in caves. The knowledge for this needs to be passed to subsequent generations.
Again, as herd mentality is simply following those around you, you need to constantly fight this complacency with learned knowledge transferred from individuals. Eventually the herd mentality will likely break, with a centre group of individuals (likely hereditary) will develop, as this is the most efficient form of knowledge transference from generation to generation. It is inevitable then that it may actually be a monarchistic society eventually (perhaps with varying degrees of size of aristocracy).
