As far as homo sapiens is concerned, the part that makes us unique is our brains. The rest of the human body is not significantly different from that of the hominids that didn't develop intelligence and especially sentience to the extent that h. sapiens did.
The brain itself starts off with around 200 billion neurons. It reduces to around 100 billion by the time we reach maturity. 100 billion is an enormous number. It's about the number of stars in the (Milky Way) galaxy, and each neuron can make up to 10,000 synaptic links.
Our nearest living relative is (arguably) the bonobo, a species of chimpanzee, but there were other hominids through prehistory, some of them less intelligent than homo sapiens.
As you pointed out earlier, we are born with very rudimentary brain function, but it grows in complexity as we grow up. The brain is to intelligence as the canvas is to a masterpiece.
No permutation of the 25000 protein synthesising genes can be used to predict the final structure of the brain. Every time you think, the brain rewires a little bit more. So we are much more nurture than nature, and that nurture is the result of necessary interaction with other human beings. Without human contact and interaction, the brain doesn't develop and even loses the capacity to develop. The canvas that is the brain has remained fairly constant for say 50,000 years. The part that has changed is the "software" (or the programming from other human beings and finally from the individual) - and that "software has been progressively improving as time goes on - not through a process of allelomorphic genetics, but through inheritance through parental influences. As humanity became more and more complex, the capacity of the individual to learn increased. Another factor has been the development of the epigenome, but let's not go there.
Take away that nurture factor, and we'd be probably much less intelligent than a bonobo.
Now you might argue that the collective and growing sentience of mankind could be defined as a god factor. It's certainly as special as it is mysterious. If you think of the awareness of mankind developing over the last few thousand years, it's a pretty spine tingling idea.
What do you think the effect of spoken language in its first rudimentary form would have been? (on human intelliegence) A means of communicating subtle ideas. Then later, what do you think the impact of the written word was on the collective intelligence of humanity? It must have been even more iconoclastic. So I'd argue that our "environment" was particularly unique from that perspective.
Quote:John 1
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
That was an incredible flash of insight by the person who wrote that original text.
Did the "word" create mankind in his current form. Did the ability to communicate subtle ideas transform the early hominids into homo sapiens?
These are questions, not answers. I'm expressing ideas, and I make no apology for quoting one of the sacred texts of humanity. They all contain wisdom.
Now I'm expecting more than a simple deconstruction from you Soren.