Europe 500 years ago was a cesspit of superstition, religious warfare, corruption and state cronyism. It took a century of bitter religious warfare to suggest toleration and the separation of political regime from religion.
The development of modern science in the 17th century was serendipitous, being based on a handful of individuals: Machiavelli, Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, followed shortly afterwards by Huygens, Newton and Leibniz.
Capitalism built on the European trading and banking networks developed over centuries by the Italian city states and then others. When the English East India Company launched in 1600 without assistance from any great lord of the realm, it signaled the growing independence of the bourgeoisie from feudalism and a capacity for commercial law and self-organization seldom found anywhere else. Finally the discipline of the factory-- getting up on time and working according to the clock's and the machine's schedule or starve to death-- brought us an extraordinarily orderly and wealthy society.
The failures we see around us are a product of the societal lassitude brought about by wealth, which also subsidizes the vain and utopian ideals of the elites who promote greater social disorder in the name of "compassion".
There’s surely more to civilizational advancement than IQ. Curiosity, prudent risk-taking and the ability to delay gratification are also important. I believe these factors are mediated by, among other things, testosterone. Testosterone also plays out in group differences: blacks higher than whites; whites, higher than north-east asian.