There are really two possible answers here. The first one is the most popular with anthropologists and archaeologists. This idea depends on agriculture. The argument goes that humans were already excellent thinkers and tool makers. They had invented weapons for hunting and vessels for storing food and materials and clothing for surviving colder climates. This is not totally unique. It has recently been recognized that many animals create or modify things to use as tools. But humans do it exceptionally well. But for thousands upon thousands of years, humans didn't do much more than make these basic tools. So, what changed?
Well, we know one thing. All the big monuments, all the major architecture, the invention of language, the development of mining and metalworking technology, all of it comes AFTER the invention of Agriculture. There are a couple possible reasons for this. First off, in hunter-gatherer societies, pretty much everyone has to spend a few hours a day finding food. Sure, this leaves a fair bit of time for leisure activities, but it doesn't leave enough time or food to support a lot pf people who can't or won't find food. Babies, the elderly, and a few very important people are about all the extra non-working hands such societies can bear. The invention of agriculture made the process of getting food much more efficient. More efficiency means more food, and more food means that some people might be able to start specializing in other functions. Suddenly, society can have different jobs: farmer, brickmaker, builder,soldier, etc. This process of specialization can then lead to more inventions and technological growth.
The other reason agriculture might have led to more technological growth is by creating the needs for new tech. If necessity is the mother of invention, then agricultural societies create a lot of new needs. Irrigation, political control, farming tools, etc. Each new invention creates a further need or opportunity. So, one option for explaining our technological prowess is the original big idea of farming our food rather than hunting or gathering it.
Personally, I think this is a good hypothesis. I think it needs an addition, though. For the most part, the rate of technological change was pretty glacially slow throughout most of history. Then, following the Renaissance, something pretty major happened: the scientific revolution. Keep in mind that anatomically modern humans have existed for around 200,000 years. Agriculture has existed for about 10 or 20 thousand years. Since then, humans have built buildings out of bricks, stone and wood. They've sailed around in what were essentially giant rowboats. They traveled on foot or horseback. They farmed by hand with basic tools. That was true for thousands of years. But in the past 500 years or so, we have invented deep sea navigation and sailing technology, discovered universal gravitation and electromagnetism, determined the structure of the universe, discovered cellular and evolutionary theory, the germ theory of disease, the atomic and nuclear theories of matter, developed internal combustion engines, steam engines, powered boats and trains and planes and automobiles, modern medicine, genetics, electronics, computers, digital language, etc. It is only in the past 500 years that we've gotten to the point of building rockets that can reach space. So what changed?
Well, for thousands of years, it was all kinda trial and error, and random lucky people who were smart enough to figure something out. But after the Renaissance, humans invented the most magnificent tool in the history of our solar system, possibly in the history of the universe: SCIENCE! Now, there was a process, a method to investigate relationships, to determine truths about the world around us. And this was the magical tool that enabled such rapid progress over the recent centuries when compared to the millennia that had come before.
So, short answer: Agriculture and the Scientific Method were the major events that led to our overwhelming technological superiority.