And that question of why turns out to be one of the most contentious discussions in world history today. For instance, here are some Eurocentric reasons why industrialization might have happened first in Europe. There's the cultural superiority argument that basically holds that Europeans are just better and smarter than other people. Sometimes this is formulated as Europeans possessing superior rationality. By the way, you'll never guess where the people who make this argument tend to come from unless you guess that they come from Europe. And then others argue that only Europe had the culture of science and invention that made the creation of these revolutionary technologies possible. Another argument is that freer political institutions encouraged innovation and strong property rights created incentives for inventors.