> it's because that area had major brutal competition which never resulted annihilation of the losing side. yes, europe's geography plays a big role in europe's huge intellectual and technological achievements.  europe is a big peninsula on the west coast of asia, a peninsula made of many smaller peninsulas. this means europe naturally divides into a dozen or so smaller countries or cultural zones (like if one added the low countries to the german sphere for holland and the french sphere for belgium).  since it's natural for a dozen or so distinct cultures, and then nation-states, to form in western europe, this means there is naturally a lot of competition there, including martial competition and warfare.  warfare, in turn, drives invention, as necessity is the mother of invention, as schopenhauer said. and, as schopenhauer said, the european continent, even before it was riddled with regularly warring nation-states or even just proto-nations, was cold enough that the climate shaped europeans' higher intelligence as compared to more equatorially located races.
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