Once imitation gets good enough (general and accurate) were capable of spreading behaviors (phenotypes) without having to wait for folks to be born and grow up.
It feels like bipedalism, opposable thumbs and strong social behaviour and other factores were the perfect storm at the perfect time.
What seems to be rare is the ability to use culture a medium to store and transmit tech.
What's separates humans is we can construct common fictions that we actually believe in, eg "my job is to maximize shareholder value" where both the corporation and the responsibilities towards it are made up but generally believed.
There's of course a rather large elephant in this room, too, that decides a lot of things about our lives.
What other animals make fire? Cooked food was the game changer.
https://www.livescience.com/5946-chimps-master-step-controll...
For example monkeys have been known to exhibit fashion trends (hanging a bit of grass out of their ear). But these trends fizzle out over time. Before more behaviors can be layered on top.
I think you’re right about those factors creating a good environment for this to happen and I bet they’re sufficient but not necessary. Too bad we don’t have another example :)
If most animals are operating on a calorie deficit and fixing this can lead to larger brains then why haven’t domesticated animals evolved towards our level of intelligence?
Trying to describe culture with stories feels like trying to describe biology with proteins. It gets us most of the way there but also adds a whole ton of complexity because it misses the fundamental nature of the system.
Humans are great at general and accurate imitation. This probably seeded a runaway evolutionary process, the result of which was tools, fire, and language.
>If most animals are operating on a calorie deficit and fixing this can lead to larger brains then why haven’t domesticated animals evolved towards our level of intelligence?
Because farm animals do not evolve, they are bred. We have directed their evolutionary paths for centuries, away from what it would do on it's own, towards creatures that produce more milk, more meat, or fattier meat.
From a calories-per-unit-of-labor standpoint, dogs and cats have now clearly eclipsed humanity, using their emotional intelligence to create a post-scarcity Marxian utopia where they can mostly do whatever they want all day while humans toil for them.