It is my understanding that "something happened" in human development only about 50,000 years ago, most likely a dramatic change or increase in language use. (Maybe it was that black door-shaped thing?) So the significant upward curve of intelligence is absurdly recent in evolutionary terms. It could involve some kind of mutation, like how blue eyes apparently arose in a single person. You could try researching along those lines, sorry I don't have more specific details. It is also well-known that writing began about 5000 years ago, and without that we're not very different from animals.

You could ask whether it is really a winning strategy if we are destroying the planet.

@ScottRowe - Can you live your life without knowing who you are, and where you are coming from? This is a legitimate question, and one of the three - Science, Philosophy, Religion - has to have an answer.

@Lowri - "asking for scientific speculation " - Science doesn't like to make speculations, but philosophy does.

Evolution provides an explanation but that explanation requires data. A detailed knowledge of every generation of life is required to answer specific questions like yours and others like "Why aren't all humans ambidextrous? Why are humans predominantly right handed? Evolution can answer this but detailed historical data is required.

We should probably think harder about where we're going, since that is something we can affect, and it will have some effect on us. Satisfying answers to questions about the past don't mean much to me. (my money is on the door-shaped thing)

@TheMatrixEquation-balance: Some of us are content with the answers we have found, despite knowing that we will never have every last detail. My knowledge of who I am and where I have come from apparently would not satisfy you, but that is because we are interpreting those words differently and making different assumptions. Philosophy can help us understand where the differences are and their implications, but I don't think it can resolve one versus the other unless we can somehow throw out all our preferences and preconceptions, which strikes me as being beyond human capability.

This seems another in the line: “what does science have to say about this unscientific concept?” Intelligence is common across species, if not to the same extent as humanity (you may well ask why human claws are so short and weak compared to others), while consciousness is not something that has yet been even attempted to be scientifically explained. -1 because you’re asking what science has to say on something science doesn’t care to talk about. You can’t even prove that I’m conscious, or vice versa; now you want science to study it? It’s just not reasonable.

@ScottRowe: Oook! (Excitedly waves arms.)

@ScottRowe: Writing is a marvelous tool, but modern society forgets that they were mnemonic techniques and direct teaching preserving essential knowledge long before we learned how to put it into a detailed and lasting medium. When I am in practice, I can deliver an hour long story, word for word accurate, from memory. It took much longer to memorize then it would have to write down, but we know some information was passed from generation to generation exactly that way. Even now there seem to be some cultural "standing waves" which propagate this way, though they are now reinforced by media.

You can also convey a heck of a lot of information in a sketch or model, without using words at all, if your species and tribe have those skills.

Actually, science does make speculations. It just doesn't claim they are anything but guesses, brainstorming, half baked suspicions, or fiction until it has sufficient evidence to support them. The geosynchronous satellite was invented by Arthur C Clarke in an SF story, long before it was possible to actually put one in orbit... (That's fairly well known. What people forget is that he suggested the killer app for such things would be to bypass terrestrial censorship, specifically to distribute pornography. He wasn't entirely wrong.)

"Evolutionary biology cannot answer the question about our (human) origin. " This is true. Evolution is a theory of change with life as a given. It doesn't deal with origin of life.

Evolutionary biology does not recognize "why" as a meaningful question; its focus is on how. We are a contingent outcome. There was nothing requiring that human level sapience develop, just as there was nothing requiring that you in particular be here. We are something that happened to happen, and if we could reset the world and try again it might happen very differently. Admittedly, some people don't like that answer, which is where we get creators and the anthropic theory and other attempts to argue that we were inevitable.

You look at the peak of a mountain, see the first person to plant their flag, and think to yourself: Why is there no-one else on the mountain? While disregarding all the other people further down. (Except there isn't really a "top" of evolution, even if intelligence may be one of the most versatile adaptions, if you have enough resources to overcome the huge energy cost).

The specifics of how evolution functions would be a biology question. Although as others noted, this question is based on a false premise that other species aren't intelligent. And it also seems like you're trying to push your personal perspective, rather than actually asking a question that you want an answer to.

Another day, another anthill kicked...

There are 350 million years worth of large, land-dwelling animals, and a few thousand years of tool use wouldn't leave a mark in the fossil record. Who says it didn't?

If intelligence is an advantage, why don't ALL species become more intelligent with every generation? Rare traits in evolution have a higher entry barrier. A big one for intelligence is the time newborns need to be independent. Watch a baby elephant walk almost immediately. Walking on 2 legs with our skeleton already required parents that can carry around newborns until they can walk. Elephants could not well handle that degree of parent care, same as whales.

Perfectly valid philosophical question. Voting to reopen. I would identify language. The chromosome fusion that split hominids off, allowed more gene-movements, & is linked to a raised palette +speech. The hominid niche in Subsaharan Africa was very hostile, between endemic diseases & variable climate - population of 20k for around 1m years, a pressure-cooker for social evolution. Cracking shells & coconuts, & fire, allowed humans to spread. Ravens & octopuses can be better novel problem solvers than equivalent aged humans, but language relates to social intelligence & they are solitary

@gs apparently only 35,000 years ago, humans invaded Australia and almost all species of large, land-dwelling animals disappeared. So tool use seemingly did leave a mark, or a big hole. Environment destruction is not a recent invention.

@TheMatrixEquation-balance "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Anyone who can answer these three questions is ready to be healed." - Lewis Mehl-Madrona, from the book "Coyote Medicine". So, I have some idea why you are asking about this.

Wow, edit is dead... Third question is "Why am I here", sorry.