> Why are humans the only species to have reached such an incredible level of intelligence relative to all the other species on the planet? Maybe they went ext

> Why are humans the only species to have reached such an incredible level of intelligence relative to all the other species on the planet? Maybe they went extinct shortly after attaining similar technological levels as us, and we humans just presumed them (eg dinosaurs) to be stupid reptiles? In fact, given that homosapiens and our close relatives roamed the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, it’s quite a spooky question to ask why only in the past couple thousand years we’ve been able to build a technologically advanced civilization.