Fundamental differences at the core of social science

Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way?

... As of the year A.D. 1500, when Europe's worldwide colonial expansion was just beginning, peoples of different continents already differed greatly in technology and political organization...Of course those technological and political differences as of A.D. 1500 were the immediate cause of the modern world's inequalities.

(Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel)

Before 18000 income per person varied across societies and epochs. But there was no upward trend...short-term gains in income through technological advances were inevitably lost through population growth. Thus the average person of 1800 was no better off than the average person of 10.000 BC... The Industrial revolution a mere two hundred years ago changed forever the possibilities for material consumption. (Gregory Clark's A Farewell to Alms)