Most probably there were several factors. Two of them could be the competition between the separate human clans and the beginning of property differentiation. These two seemed to happen as a result of increase of Homo sapiens population density in a cerain areas.

Of course there are no only single factor responsible. I just thought about the rate of development of Civilization. It has an exponential shape which had plateau at its base. So the reason must be an intrinsic characteristic of development which is accelerating with time. 

The contributing factors of biological mechanism behind could be several among which the ever increasing population may be the most important.

It may be that climate change imposed both movement and innovation. The climate was changing very rapidly 14000 to 10000 years ago

This is probably related to developmental factors of life in common. New structures of living and thinking simply emerge because systems in a stage of self-organized criticality have to adapt to new constraints in the frame of a step-by-step evolution with time (see e.g. Chapter 8.1 Punctuated equilibrium of my book Quantitative General Adaptation - 2008 - 2012).

Around 12,000 - 10,000 years ago, men changed from wandering (hunter / gatherer) to sedentarity (agriculture / farming). They had to adapt to new life conditions and to find solutions to a lot of new problems (efficient agriculture, animal domestication, distribution of tasks, counting, measuring time, predicting seasons, assess value of goods, trading, manufacturing devices, ....).There might indeed also have been an effect of climate change fostering sedentarity.

My opinion is that the climate warming  occurring 12-10,000 y.a  (and still running today) favoured a population increase that promoted the extinction of  the great Fauna,  the birth of the rearing and farming and consequently the sedentary habit and labour division within the tribe. At this point, all  the innumerable cognitive resources (linked to survival and sociality, including technology, art, music, religion, war) accumulated over 190,000  years of evolution (and more than 2 millions, if we consider the start of Genus Homo)  had the chance to be fully expressed. Sadly enough, from that time the humans became slaves of the job and subjected to innumerable infectious diseases deriving from domestic animals. 

Sorry Ales, but 12ka ago H. sapiens was already H. sapiens and Pan troglodytes was still Pan troglodytes. Thus, it's quite trivial that climate change acted differently on species with different evolutionary pathways, dating back to 7Ma ago  

Acho que o uso do fogo na alimentação, poderia influenciar mutações gênicas na "inteligência" do homem.

Ales

As you hypothesized. H.sapiens did express some of his/her high cognitive abilities much earlier than 12  ka ago. For example, we have some shells containing red ochre, which seemingly serves as body ornament, dating back 100 ka ago.  We have also a block of red ochre engraved with  a geometric motif dating back 65-70 ka.  Also, the first statuette of wonderful manufacture we have (The Lion man)  was found in a cave of 40 ka ago. Last but not least, the wonderful horses, bisons and other animals painted on the walls of the  Chauvet cave (France), date back  38ka ago.  We also know that Homo (erectus/ergaster) starts to use and control the fire 800-600 ka ago. and the first sophisticated weapons (spears) date back to 300 ka ago (H. heidelbergensis, a very probable ancestor of our species).  Moreover,  both H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis  probably used a proto-language. Thus, we have the proofs that H. sapiens was already equipped with highest  and various cognitive and manual  abilities well before the start of human civilization, which we use to locate between 8 and 10 ka ago.  All these findings have permanently changed the picture of cultural and social development of early humans.

Ales, I completely agree with your last observations: climate warming just "created" the ecological scenario where all the prior cognitive and SOCIAL advances could be expressed at their "best" (unfortunately so, also the war ability) . In this sense, climate it's certainly one of the crucial factors.

Ales

Consider these very newly provided dates and events in the history of H.sapiens

200 ka: H.sapiens evolution in East Africa. 

100 ka  out of Africa first time and first Interbreeding with H neandertalensis in Middle East in a brief interglacial period (Riss-Wurm). This first H.sapiens, whose primitive technology was very similar to that of Neandertals, became exctint or came back to Africa around 80 ka ago.

70-60ka: out of Africa second time. Second interbreeding with Neandertals. Cognitive revolution, language emergence,  abstract thinking, art, music.

45- 50 ka H., sapiens reached Australia. Extinction of Australian Megafaune

40. ka H.sapiens reached Europe. Third interbreeding with Neandertals 

37-38 ka dog domestication

30 ka extinction of H. neandertalensis

16-20 ka H.sapies reached Americas. Extinction of American Megafaune.

13 ka extinction of H. floresiensis (a dwarf insular form of Homininae)

12 ka Global Warming. Agriculture Revolution.

I may suggest that H. sapiens passed c.a. 60ka  exterminating predators, prey and competitors - which fits well with the dark side of human nature - thus creating the best conditions to flourish once the climate became mild.

Changes in non-material elements of culture probably occurred, such as the develop-

ment of oral traditions. Even before the end of glaciation, a less stable environment

must have forced people to adapt to new environments, and the end of glaciation must

have been a time of great challenges. As you know, people had to live in new biotic

zones with different flora and fauna, and invent new tools (for small-game hunting,

fishing, etc). and then for cultivation. Biological evolution at this point continued, but

it was in terms of biochemical changes in adapting to new diets and disease environ-

ments (e.g., in response to cultivation, to malarial environments, etc.)

I believe that the main factor that contributes to technological progress is the emergence and development of civilization. By the term "civilization" in this case, I understand the use of different types of energy for purposes of species survival outside the organism. In particular, the use of energy for cooking, making various artifacts etc. This "external" use of energy make possible to increase energy supply without overheating of the body. Types of energy can be both abiotic (fire, water, wind, steam, electricity, etc.) and biotic (work of human (including slaves) and animals (horses, oxen, bees, etc.). The process of evolution of civilization (increase of energy supply) initially was relatively slow. This fact explains relatively negligible technological progress in the early stages of the civilization evolution. However, the rate of process is in accordance with the principle "from the achieved". Mathematically, this principle leads to exponentially curve. Rate of evolution increases in proportion to the reached level. More thoroughly this problem is described in the monograph Zotin AI, Zotin AA [Direction, rate, and mechanisms of progressive evolution (thermodynamic bases of biological evolution)] Moscow: Nauka Publish-House, 1999. This monograph one can download from ResearchGate. Unfortunately monograph published only in Russian. Some articles in English also available on ResearchGate: Zotin A.A., Lamprecht I., Zotin A.I. Heat barriers in progressive evolution of animals and humans // Biol. Bull. 1998. V. 25. N 3. P. 247–252. Zotin A.A., Lamprecht I., Zotin A.I. Bioenergetic progress and heat barriers // J. Non-Equilib. Thermodyn. 2001. V. 26. P. 191-202.

Still I advise to look the articles mentioned above. We consider the exponential curve not as a formal mathematical formula, but as a thermodynamic law that provides the overall direction of the energetic progress during the biological and civilization evolution on the dissipative branch despite occurring in this way the energy barriers. The exponential curve well describes the observed experimental data.

Ales,

As you know, Ilya Prigogine is a born Russian who lived in Belgium.

I agree with you that much of the stuff that appeared 1-3 decades ago about emergence of stability in forced far from equilibrium dynamic systems - as applied to nearly everything including life - was a bit exaggerated. Prigogine received the Nobel price in chemistry in 1977 for his contribution to non-equilibrium thermodynamics and his theory of "dissipative structures" far from equilibrium. However, this mainly concerned chemical reactions like the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction. Unfortunately, as you point out, this triggered anarchic development in all directions, with sometimes odd results.    

In spite of this, I'd like to mention that many of Prigogine's articles and books are still worth reading nowadays and certainly his initial work on the thermodynamics of near-equilibrium open systems (see a.o. his phd thesis "Introduction to Thermodynamics of Irreversible Processes") including his minimum entropy production principle.

Best regards

Fully in line with you, Ales !