The basic implications of the term...
You bring up some important ideas BADecker. Where did evolution/life start? The answer from science so far is "I don't know". It is a true mystery and to just say randomness... That is not an answer. We don't really even know what life is. We can't do it in a lab, we don't know if life started here or somewhere else. We don't know if life is common in the universe or if this is the only occurrence.
What can be observed is that over time life on Earth has become more complicated and that older forms change via DNA into different forms. That we do in the lab every day. It happens to all living things from germs evolving resistance or into new species like HIV, or whale flukes evolving from feet.
There is also a vast amount of fossil and DNA evidence about our own species. For most of our history there was more than one species of human on Earth. Just 40,000 years ago you could have met at least five species of humans. Today there is only one species, but the reconstructions below show just some of the others in our larger family tree. We (all life on Earth) are just variations of the DNA molecule and in the future it will get even more confusing. Soon we will swap out sections of our DNA the way we modify computer code. It's easy we are all just DNA monsters.
Actually, that which we observe over time is not necessarily a more complicated Earth. Archaeology over the last two or three decades has shown that there was in the past a great trading organization that covered the Earth. You can see that it was united by all the similarities in the structures (often pyramids) and carvings that are gradually being found around the world.
While technology in the prehistoric past of man was not the same as ours today, it also was not necessarily inferior. Consider that we would find it very difficult if not impossible to build The Great Pyramid with our current technology. And at least one of the pyramids in Bosnia is a lot larger than The Great Pyramid. In addition, pyramids seem to focus a healing energy that seems rejuvenate people in ways that our medical has no understanding about.
Consider the fact that within the fossil record we find about three times the number of species around today. These died off, not because things are advancing, but rather because they seem to be declining.
Consider Neanderthal man. There is no evidence that would suggest that he was less intelligent than we. In fact, the larger size of his cranium would suggest just the opposite. The smart Neanderthal would never want to live in the crowded cities of today. He is smart enough to know that there is a whole lot more freedom in the peace of nature.
As for the 40,000 years you mentioned, without bringing my personal beliefs into it, you can check into the fact that there is much disagreement about the ages of prehistoric things and times. The general understanding was set in place, arbitrarily, by the universities, simply so that there could be an orderly setting down of timelines. Dates and ages are certainly not agreed on by all the experts in the field. Even C-14 dating is wildly off at times. If you, as a teacher, check in what others say about timelines into ancient prehistory, do it discretely. Universities don't like it when people find out that that their timelines are arbitrary.
Since we are just getting a first more or less solid understanding of DNA and how the DNA systems work, we don't know that there isn't an underlying, imbedded method for adaptation to protect the species that we haven't seen yet. In other words, germs that become resistant, could have a process built right into their whole system, a process that we simply haven't discovered, one that acts like a more complex computer program, one that will need decompiling once we find out that it is there. Don't rule it out just yet.
Even quantum mechanics, which is simply probability extended, might be able to be extended to the place where Einstein's principles of cause and effect fit right in with quantum entanglement. It would lie in understanding further dimensions, mathematically at least. The reason for quantum mechanics is that people have gone about as far as they can in direct cause and effect observation. Complex probability fills in the gaps in direct cause and effect observations.
