Modern evolutionary theory doesn't make much sense in explaining things in regards to how we make jumps. One of the problems we have faced as humans in regards to understanding is our modern deconstructionist tendencies. We deconstruct life to that of parts that make up a machine, but our whole is bigger than the sum of our parts. Life isn't replicating machinery, it is more akin to what people call "God" from a holistic scientific perspective.
Our genes encode far more than just proteins, and don't just effect biology; we have "home-building" built in, consider birds' nests, spider webs or beaver dams, homo sapien hovels, etc for example.
An additional idea which explains evolutionary jumps is that we have "explorer mode" built in.
"Explorer mode" is the ability of an animal under certain conditions to explore and search for alternative resources nearby.
This could be for example, a salmon choosing not to return to its birthing pool to reproduce; which might not be a mistake by the salmon as current explanations go, but explorer mode activated, in which it chooses to return to another pool, a high-risk high-reward strategy, which if successful would have that Salmon producing 1000 offspring as opposed to 2 offspring from all the others that returned.
In a sense "explorer mode" is an animal breaking from its subconscious instinctual routines, and utilizing a level of consciousness.
What is consciousness? Our subconscious deals with all our automatic tasks. Like when I type I am not consciously thinking where to hit my fingers as I rapidly write.
Our subconscious deals with all our knowns, whereas our consciousness is a chaos interpreting machine. We utilise it to navigate unknowns, to explore our way to the moon and to the inside of an atom, etc.
From an evolutionary perspective consciousness is high level "explorer mode"
During evolution we had the Cambrian explosion where most modern recognizable life came from. This explosion of life can be explained by "explorer mode", as this explosion happened with the introduction of life that could process low levels of consciousness. This introduction of low level "explorer mode" would greatly diversity the population as nearby alternative resources would occasionally be stumbled upon, creating separate populations. An evolutionary arms race also began during this era, likely spurred on by more complex animals who could begin to consciously strive for fitness.
Consumption of hallucinogenic edibles has also likely historically boosted the power of explorer mode to greater heights by presenting the animal with more ways to perceive.
This idea of explorer mode also explains why other animals exhibit consciousness to certain degrees, with some possessing high level conscious behaviour such as crows and ravens who can use tools to make tools, speak to humans, etc.
@RiskDebonair
Irish Writer, Poet, & Lover