Only marginally relevant, but the people who are in this thread and can answer may overlap quite a bit.

I have always been fascinated with why did so many advancements have been made in the last few hundreds of years, centralized mostly in the “Western countries”? Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely not some “superiority-check” on my side, I have just never heard a convincing argument that made this area special. Was it just a “good place at the good time” event, something related to some side effect of religion/society?

One somewhat convincing argument was the constant battles between small countries?