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The human brain wasn't just some fluke, over-the-night mutation. The human brain has taken hundreds of millions of years to develop. Millions of generations all carrying small genetic variables each time, and as these build up to alter a chemical, physiological, behavioural or other physical alterations from the norm of the individuals it interbreeds with. Then this new feature can either give the organism an advantage or disadvantage in adapting to the environment it is in. The brain itself has been in our ancestors for hundreds of millions of years, and intelligence has been prominent in our ancestors from around six million years ago in genus' such as Ardipithecus and Australopithecus.

The human brain itself came out from a few key adaptation that our ancestors had to make. Firstly bipedalism was needed to adapt to the receding rainforests during this geological era. Individuals with the ability to walk on both legs had a higher chance of spotting predators, foraging food and escaping predators. This bipedalism gave the upright spine which allowed for greater blood flow to reach the head and thus help fuel our modern brains. Bipedalism in this way slowly developed as it become more advantageous, and with each successive generation we could slowly become more upright as we are today.

Another key function in the development of our brains was the fact we were ape-like creatures adapting to life on the plains. A new world, full of space for new adaptions. Most primates are adapted to forests and being able to easily forage food from trees. However humans had to rely on the sparse resources of the plains. So using our brains was of the essence.

Any individual who had a small alterations in hormonal and chemical genetic variables would allow for a changed behaviour pattern or a genetic alteration allowing for slightly increased cranium size to allow for them to hunt for root vegetables, non-poisonous fruits and nuts, and the ability to hunt small to medium game would be more likely to survive. With humans having to use theirs brains much more than other animals, they kept going down their path to sentience. Here we get to a point where these early human ancestors who were already users of basic tools such as smashing nuts with stones and such develop the ability to use sticks and make them into spears or clubs. This itself probably developed by one unknown ancestor, which then taught it to their offspring and the knowledge was inherited throughout the ages and was expressed in genetic behavioural patterns.

With the ability to hunt game better, we became more pack-hunters, and relied on each other and a tight-knit social group to hunt and kill prey easier. This development as a social animal meant that nurturing young and maintaining healthy relationships was of the essence. This of course also needed a good brain to maintain a good amount of memories and ability to communicate to allow social relationships to be maintained and thus increase chances of collective survival.

Now we get to the big turning point in early human ancestors. The invention of fire, fire happens naturally in the wild as exemplified by wildfires, bushfires and lightning strikes. It would not be unlikely that our ancestors already had experienced and seen fire numerous times. With all of the prior eventualities giving these ancestors a large brain capable of making judgements. They would likely have kept fire, and learnt how to make fire through a trial and error, mixed with education and passing down abilities to allow us to maintain this. Fire was big advantage, keeping away predators at night and giving us a better visibility, ancestors of ours capable of making fires and maintaining them had a better chance to survive. With us being able to make fire we would have experimented with our food and put into onto fire, it's not a hard thing to accidently do or intentionally giving by now our ancestors are actually smarter than we take them for.

Now, are ancestors can now cook meat which makes it much easier to chew and eat, but also releases more nutrients within the food and makes it easier to digest. This increase in nutritional benefit would help our ancestors develop a healthier lifestyle and thus give them a good working brain. Added onto this is that with less use of our jaw muscle to chew, we could develop more space and use more blood and oxygen supply to fuel our brain. This meant that over a few hundred of thousands of years of harnessing fire. We come to the early human, the ancestor of all mankind. It wouldn't be for another hundred thousand years that we would develop civilisations; sophisticated agriculture, language and even religions. But that's a different story, for a different day.