Why did white people become more advanced than other races?

[CharonY]

4 hours ago, swansont said:

What was the extent of the European "dominance" in 1000? They dominated...Europe, and the Mediterranean basin. 

After that, their "dominance" was aided by have more advantages than in other places, as discussed in the book mentioned early in the thread: Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond.

Actually a better book (especially in the historic sense) to look at the becoming of new empires is "After Tamerlane" by John Darwin. While the rough outline in Diamond's book is fine, he gets the historic side of things wrong too often, unfortunately.

A few things of note though. It is silly to speak of European dominance as if it was a somewhat united system. Though many folks with that kind of... ideology seem to think of the Roman empire and anything today as a direct line of succession (which, frankly is just silly). But even before the Roman Empire existed, there were perhaps a dozen or so empires that have come and gone. China (for which some folks also claim a direct succession to the old empire, which is just a bit less silly) has gone through four or so dynasty before the Roman empire and continued to exist in various forms. The Egyptian kingdoms at that time were already ancient, the Kingdom of Kush was for a time a great rival. Another ancient civilization was the Kerma culture, which was absorbed into the New Egyptian Kingdom a thousand years before the Roman empire then there were the various kingdoms in the Middle East which were dominating in their time, including the Median empire. The Achaemenid Empire, of course  was one of the greatest of its time. This did not change during the rise of the Roman Empire. The Aksumite empire (located roughly where Eritrea is) had extensive trade partner with the Roman empire and so on. All these powers were dominating in their respective sphere of influence. Rather obviously the view of straight European dominance is based on a strongly Eurocentric view of things and ignores for the most part the times where it was touch and go as well as the dominance and influence of other powers.