Invented in the High Middle Ages

Some say that the modern world started in Enlightenment of arounnd 1750 AD or so, but here I list the much more important advances of the European High Middle Ages, 1000-1300 AD.

Clocks. Mechanical clocks were invented, and society started running according to schedules.

Universities. Knowledge was advanced by group efforts building on the work of others. The first universities were in Italy, France, and England.

Nuclear family. This was driven by primogeniture, Catholic bans on cousin marriage, and the economics of small farms. The nuclear family became the unit of Western Civilization.

Market economy. The High Middle Ages saw the beginnings of a market economy, with the growth of towns, trade networks (e.g., the Hanseatic League), and guilds.

Individualism, as made possible by the nuclear family and markets.

Agricultural innovations, like the the heavy plow, three-field crop rotation, horse-drawn plows (using horse collars), three-field rotation.

Architecture, like gothic cathedrals, wind mills, and water mills.

English common law.

Banks, double entry bookkeeping. Started in Venice and other cities.

Military technology like stirrups and crossbows.

Navigation technology, like the compass and shipbuilding.

This is what made the modern world possible, not the Enlightment that came centuries later.

Just compare Europe to the rest of the world. There were great civilizations in China, India, and Persia, but they lacked the above innovations, and fell far behind Europe.

I did not mention Christianity, as it started much earlier. However it was crucial to most of these developments, and to Europe leaping ahead.

Here is a more typical view:

In Enlightenment Now, psychologist Steven Pinker argues that 17th- and 18th-century Enlightenment values and modernization have contributed to gradually improving the world on “every single measure of human well-being.”

Further explained:

The Age of Enlightenment refers to a historical period in the 17th and 18th centuries when European intellectuals and philosophers were concerned with re-thinking social values and moving toward a more “progressive” vision for humanity. This included thinking about the most rational ways to go about organizing and governing society to maximize human well-being, including discussions of freedom, equality, and empirical truth.

Pinker says modern prosperity is the result of 17-18C philosophers discovering rational thinking. No, those thinkers were of no consequence, compared to the above innovations.

I have posted other theories Explaining the Great Divergence, and you can find more in Wikipedia:

The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world (i.e. Western Europe along with its settler offshoots in Northern America and Australasia[2]) overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilizations, eclipsing previously dominant or comparable civilizations from Asia such as Qing China, Mughal India, the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Iran, and Tokugawa Japan, among others.[3]

Scholars have proposed a wide variety of theories to explain why the Great Divergence happened, including geography, culture, institutions, and luck.[4] ...

"Why do the Christian nations, which were so weak in the past compared with Muslim nations begin to dominate so many lands in modern times and even defeat the once victorious Ottoman armies?"..."Because they have laws and rules invented by reason."
Ibrahim Muteferrika, Rational basis for the Politics of Nations (1731)[29]

As you can see, people want to credit reason, but not credit genes, religion, and the middle ages.