I would guess that most analyses of “development” in human cultures fall victim to accidents of geography and history. Let’s begin taking snapshots of various human cultures 100,000 years ago.
For almost 90,000 years, every view comes back with some sort of hunter-gatherer society.
Then, around 10,000 BCE, we find a few, widely scattered incidences of agriculture.
By 2,000 BCE, we find that a few of the agricultural societies have begun to develop into city-states and fewer nation-states while agriculture has arisen (or been carried to) significantly more areas.
By the time of the (Mediterranean) Roman Empire, significant portions of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China have strong nations and even empires, meso-America and the Andes have seen the beginnings of their nation-states and empires, while city-states are popping up in other areas where there had previously been only sporadic agriculture. Rome, China, and India all expand in directions that eventually bring them into remote contact, at which point trade routes are established to provide a(n often limited) means to share improvements in knowledge. Rome expanded into Europe, China and India expanded into Indo-China. The barren steppes provided no incentive for China to expand farther north than its considerable holdings. Egypt “faced” the Mediterranean and the Sahara prevented large-scale exploration south across Africa. The American cultures had not achieved the expansionist traits of their older cousins.
By 1000 CE, the Mediterranean/Indian/Chinese triangle of shared knowledge had passed through the initial Muslim disruption and Muslim culture was now enhancing that exchange. Europe, having lost ground in the face of Asian invaders and the collapse of Rome, was beginning to stabilize. (Isolated pockets of Europe–generally religious monasteries in Ireland and northern Italy–had kept some of the sciences alive.) The American nation-states had begun to expand, although the Andes and Amazon jungle prevented the Peruvian empire from moving very far east while the Meso-American nations suffered, first, ecological disasters and, later, invasions from the north that paralleled the Asian invasions into Europe, preventing their expansion north.
By this time, early proto-empires had popped up in North America and sub-Sahara Africa.
By 1500, Europe had latched onto firearms, (relatively) large ocean-going vessels, and a mindset that said “Go forth.” China had a knowledge of powder and good ships, but the philosophy had developed as “Look within” (along with “Watch those Asian nomads that keep badgering us”). When Europeans set out, they directly interrupted the development of rising empires in sub-Sahara Africa and in North America.
Given a more than 100,000 year period of development, having a culture that missed becoming technological by 500 or even 1,000 years is really more of an accident than an indication of a flaw in the people.
We also have to consider that much scientific knowledge that those cultures did possess has been destroyed (deliberately by the Spanish in Meso-America, accidentally by Arabs and Portuguese fanning internecine warfare in sub-Sahara Africa). (When the first Portuguese explorers discovered the civilization in what is now Ghana, the nobility of each country sent their sons to the schools of the other country for education. This exchange student program ended when European/Arab meddling caused the break-up of that empire.)
Once the Europeans had established their colonies, there was no real way for any indigenous culture to express itself in scientific or technological ways.
So the great contributions of Meso-America are only being (re)discovered by archaeologists, today, while any great contributions from Africa south of the Sahara will probably have to wait for more political stability before they can be explored.
Tom~