Why are humans the only species on earth to become intelligent?
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“Intelligence” in the human sense evolved, as far as we know, only in one branch of the hominidae family – the family which contains humans and also great apes. Some of these early apes evolved in a way that having a bigger brain and using tools and communication became very important to their survival. We don’t know exactly what these evolutionary pressures were. There were many branches to this sub-family, all of which shared these ‘big-brain’ adaptations but evolved in different ways over millions of years. For one reason or another, eventually all these branches went extinct except for one branch from which two or three new species evolved: the first anatomically modern humans, another species called Homo neanderthalensis (which we know were quite similar, but somewhat anatomically different from modern humans), and perhaps a third species or sub-species called the denisova people. These three groups existed at the same time and probably had levels of intelligence similar to modern humans. For one reason or another, the homo sapiens out-competed and/or interbred with the others and the rest is all of human history.
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