Our history has been shaped by  the evolution of  earth, life on earth, our religious beliefs, governance, and scientific understanding. The trajectories of evolution  have been disrupted by a few key events.  The first event was the big bang and formation of the earth that started it all. The next was the start of life in bacteria Stromatolites that evolved into dinosaurs. The meteor that killed off the dinosaur allowed humans the opportunity to become the dominant species on earth.  The humans introduced the earliest belief systems and astronomical observations. The ice age enabled humans to populate every continent. The end of the ice age enabled settled agriculture in the Fertile Crescent  which in turn enabled the evolution of cities, a ruling class and mass religion. The Egyptian god - kings ruled for 3000 years, followed by the Greek Enlightenment when many scientific concepts including an sun centric universe first appeared.  The subsequent growth of  the Abrahamic religions reasserted religious dogma. The  Renaissance papacy enabled democracy and scientific understanding to evolve unconstrained by religious dogma. The printing press allowed the masses access to these insights, and prevented the Inquisition from reasserting control. The scientific and technological revolution has inevitably resulted in an explosion of population, food  and energy use that has led to us terraforming our planet - not in a good way. As the dominate species, we now have no choice but to change the way we life on earth. 

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Democratization has been a potent force against the traditional authoritarian forces of religion and inheritance.  Once the masses gained access to information through the printing press, universal literacy was enabled and religious leaders lost their control. The record player enabled the masses to choose what to listen to, the camera enabled the masses to memorialize their lives. 

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There have been multiple periods of "enlightenment" when key people made progress understanding the world; the Greeks  and China around 200 BC, and Islamic scholars around 1000 AD,  In each case, the progress was lost when religious dogma returned. The Renaissance around 1400 AD was different, probably because the printing press meant that literacy spread outside of the clergy and new ideas were suddenly accessible. 

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It is popular to ascribe technological progress, led by the US, to the power of "freedom" and/or "capitalism" and/or "democracy". Its clear that personal freedom, democracy and generally free markets have gone together in the west - Europe and USA. China in the 2000's is the first attempt to combine communist political control and open markets, which has been pretty successful. The over whelming success of the US in the 1900's cannot be separated from the fact that the competitions infrastructure was destroyed in 2 world wars. 

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