It may depend on the availability on various natural resources, such as big (domesticable) animals, as hypothesized by Jared Diamond in "Guns, Germs and Steel". This is why native Australians were pretty much stuck in stone age era for thousands of years. They might have never developed beyond that level. Not because they're inferior, but because they had no means to start an economy capable of accumulating resources. One could easily imagine an Earth where the only continent is Australia (surrounded by oceans) and humans - even biologically identical to us - remain hunter-gatherers for eternity.