There’s a lot written about this. There’s a book called “Prisoners of Geography” which was a bestseller and touches on some of this.

In order to have advanced ‘quickly’ as a country/culture/people - it’s helpful to have load bearing animals (horses, donkeys, camels, llamas etc), deep straight rivers, and fertile land. Access to the sea is also hugely useful.

Much of the African continent simply doesn’t have the tools that European or Asian powers had, so that has made harder what was easier elsewhere.

u/Baxters_keepy_ups already basically stated exactly what I was going to write.

Up until about the 16th to 17th century, Europe was not the world superpower that it would become.

The idea goes that Europe was able to advance in technology and power pretty quickly because of the interconnectiveness of the people on the continent

Large, navigable rivers. Arable land. Beasts of burden (i.e., horses, donkeys, camels). Deepwater ports (for trade). All of these aspects help to advance trade and, thus the connections between groups.

When large groups of people have connections like that, ideas and technology flow from one group to the next.

When you have that interplay between people (i.e. trade), you theoretically would advance quicker since someone in Portugal may have a ship design that is more efficient that the French may get to see and create for themselves or trade for.

It also helps that most of the large European powers had languages of either romance or Germanic origins, which makes talking to one another even easier.

This doesn't preclude conflict, of course, as we see countless European wars between neighbors throughout history. But between those conflicts, trade reigns Supreme.

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North American natives were effectively isolated from the rest of the world until the 15th century.

Europe, Africa, the Middle East, China, India, and southeast Asia had basically all been interconnected for millenia.

You had the Roman empire, the hellenestic kingdoms, Mongolian empire, trade routes of the Indian Ocean, trade routes like the Silk Road, etc... that had people, goods, and ideas transferring from one group to another for centuries.

That means technology, religion, science, and more from China can make it to Europe and have influence.

The Americas had some civilizations that were pretty damn advanced. The Inca somehow made a huge empire in the mountains with only humans and llamas. The Aztec basically had a capital that rivaled any city in europe at the time of its destruction.

If given time, these groups may have become more powerful, but the odds were against then when it came to trade and new ideas. There just weren't as many people involved there as in the Eurasian trade networks

They did not have animals in north America suitable for domestication to magnify their work potential. They did not have farming technology on an industrial scale, and they didn't have the social structure suitable for long term growth in most cultures. There were a few exceptions in prehistory but they did not survive to contact with Europeans. The Aztecs being the only empire that did exist then. There were a long string of prehistoric empires in the Americas but for the most part they were separated by time and distance from each other.

Edit: the Incas also had contact with Europeans.

I never said civilizations required deepwater ports to begin. I am stating that larger empires or interconnected civilizations benefit from them.

Obviously, no early civ started by trading across the seas and oceans. Rivers, especially navigable ones, were key to the early governments that we see in Mesopotamia, Egypt, indus river valley, etc...