if a chimp starts cooking with fire or instead starts cave painting, both are signs of progress but he's still a hunter gatherer. in the long run we can see the

if a chimp starts cooking with fire or instead starts cave painting, both are signs of progress but he's still a hunter gatherer. in the long run we can see the important contribution of many intellectual developments, but there may not be enough food/health surpluses for that to happen without eating cooked food. it's not useful to view evolution as "more important" moments, it's the totally of small changes in a dynamic hostile negative feedback environment.