1. we do not live underwater, so lots of tools and stuff possible (iE: fire).
2. we have usable hands with thumbs. This allows much better tooling. Ravens only have their beak and are comparatively handicapped in technical developments.
3. we do not die during/after reproduction. This allows for accumulation of knowledge instead of every generation starting to learn from scratch. That’s octopus handicap.
4. we have reasonably enough raw strength and compensate weaknesses with social groups and tools/weapons to eliminate basically all competition where we lived. And managed to increase food production for exponential population growth, again some way of tooling ultimately.
… so it for me boils down to the fact that we, among several intelligent species, have been the lucky ones to leverage tooling in the most efficient way.
And especially ravens/crows are absolutely in the ballpark of humans when it comes to intelligence. They have actual language to communicate facts to others, they have social structures/rituals similar to ours, they make tools to accomplish goals, even with multi-step-plans. Heck, they even „use“ other animals like wolves: since they are not capable of opening a fresh deer corpse to get to the meat, they search for the nearest wolf and guide him to the corpse for win-win food sharing… some wolf packs have even been seen essentially protecting raven flocks/eggs, so ravens literally can have kinda dogs.
I agree, it’s likely many subtle, accumulated factors.
I think the interesting question, that we may never be able to answer, is whether crow intelligence is such that they could have developed on our trajectory as well, had things been different. Or is our intelligence, while similar to crows and other animals in many ways, fundamentally different in some way? Or was early hominid intelligence middle of the pack and it was just the other factors you mentioned that gave it the edge it needed?
1. we do not live underwater, so lots of tools and stuff possible (iE: fire).
2. we have usable hands with thumbs. This allows much better tooling. Ravens only have their beak and are comparatively handicapped in technical developments.
3. we do not die during/after reproduction. This allows for accumulation of knowledge instead of every generation starting to learn from scratch. That’s octopus handicap.
4. we have reasonably enough raw strength and compensate weaknesses with social groups and tools/weapons to eliminate basically all competition where we lived. And managed to increase food production for exponential population growth, again some way of tooling ultimately.
… so it for me boils down to the fact that we, among several intelligent species, have been the lucky ones to leverage tooling in the most efficient way.
And especially ravens/crows are absolutely in the ballpark of humans when it comes to intelligence. They have actual language to communicate facts to others, they have social structures/rituals similar to ours, they make tools to accomplish goals, even with multi-step-plans. Heck, they even „use“ other animals like wolves: since they are not capable of opening a fresh deer corpse to get to the meat, they search for the nearest wolf and guide him to the corpse for win-win food sharing… some wolf packs have even been seen essentially protecting raven flocks/eggs, so ravens literally can have kinda dogs.