In the western world, it is clear that Monotheism is absolutely dominant. Ever since some bronze age thinker decided that there was but one God, named Jaweh, some three thousand years ago, the preponderance of western thought has been completely preoccupied with this idea of one overarching god.
Whatever it's adaptive purposes have been, is it inevitable that human society would develop in such a way as to require God as a single entity? The Greeks and Romans had an extensive and complicated hierarchy of deities, and yet they died off, killed by this new God and his followers. What impact, if any, did conversion to Christianity have on the spread of Roman culture? The empire was nearly at its end, and yet one emperor decided to convert to a little known and probably reviled religion, presumably for some political gain. I'm sure whole volumes could be written describing the fall of Rome, but to what extent did the conversion to Monotheism effect that fall?
Is there anything in the historic literature to suggest that Polytheistic societies were doomed to irrelevance, or was Monotheism such a powerful idea that such societies gave way, perhaps even willfully, before the idea of a benevolent, personal god who seems to care less about History than about the problems facing the believer himself
Clearly Western history has been completely dominated by its acceptance of Christianity and it's tenets. It's hard to imagine a world in which there wasn't a scary Jewish God standing astride the whole world and punishing it for its perceived faults.
Perhaps this isn't the correct venue for these thoughts, however I simply wanted to attempt to better understand the undercurrents of our present culture. I don't intend any of this as an attack on any particular religion. Since civilization, as we know it today, arose in the west and has inherited the belief structures therein, I wonder then why the Eastern cultures never rose to any considerable prominence. Even Eastern thought, based entirely on a Polytheistic belief structure has eventually taken on the qualities of the West's obsession with the Abrahamic God and all his vagaries.
It seems as though there really were a God predisposed to helping history through its various trouble spots, although with his own agenda and his own ideas about how History itself should unfold. Such such thoughts are all too likely human fantasy, but somehow this idea that there is something much greater than ourselves has haunted history and influenced its development, even if inadvertently, refuses to die.
No, absolutely not. Nothing in history is inevitable and you will be hard pressed to find a contemporary academic historian who stands by such Whiggish beliefs. Your post is based on several false premises, the most notable is that pagan Europeans were attracted to Christianity because its monotheistic faith was so much more powerful. This ignores the fact that many pagans converted to Christianity for its material benefits which were the result of the Church's well-organized structure, which had nothing to do with its theological doctrines.
As well, popular Christianity maintained a very pagan flavour until at least the Reformation and Counter Reformation. This is not a case of Christianity as we know it today completely dismantling previous belief structures and commanding the hearts and minds of its believers. For centuries, the vast majority of Europeans practiced a kind of popular religion that resembled a pagan worldview in contrast to the sort of dogmatic monotheistic belief that you describe. In this context, Christianity was seen by the masses as attractive not because of its doctrine, but because it seemed to be a more powerful suppository of magic that was easier to use. People used the host from mass as magical talismans, made sacrifices to saints and the Virgin Mary and tried to command God, Jesus and a number of holy figures as though they were pagan deities who could be invoked in spells. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the immense popularity of the cult of the Virgin Mary during the middle ages was due to the fact that she was conflated with earlier pagan fertility goddesses who still held the imaginations of people across Europe. This is not an isolated case either; in many instances saints and archangels were simply the replacements for pre-existing pagan deities and spirits who were supplicated in the same ways as their predecessors.
I'm certain that other users will point out the flaws in your argument, but this is my contribution. This post is built on many false assumptions, notably that people converted to Christianity because of its monotheistic doctrine, and not because of the material benefits of the Church structure. The fact that a sort of Christianized popular pagan religion was practiced throughout Europe for centuries after the "domination" of Christianity also severely undermines your statements.
I certainly agree that there are some false premises in this post, such as those mentioned by u/depanneur. It is also worth noting that all of these monotheistic religions share the same root, so aren't independent developments.
However, I think there might be some merit to the inevitability (or more accurately, advantage) of orthodoxy. Up until Christianity, religion in Europe and the East had largely been fairly inclusive theologically, allowing for the existence of gods outside of national, local or personal beliefs. In Hatti, for example, there were thousands of gods, many of them considered to be immanent in rocks, rivers and mountains. Most gods were not transcendent; they inhabited their statue or place of worship. (Gurney, Some Aspects of Hittite religion; Bryce, Life and Society in the Hittite World).
In the case of the Romans, their original religion was from a sort of animism, immanent spirit gods that inhabited streams and trees, and the household lares (Shelton, As the Romans did). The Romans were known for their acceptance of other gods and weren't too strict on what to believe. What they really cared about was orthopraxy; their main problem with Christians was that they weren't willing to perform the religious rites that the Romans believed essential to their continued success as an empire. Why didn't the Christians perform these rites? Because they believed they had a monopoly on truth. That is to say, their religion was one of orthodoxy (King, the Organisation of Roman Religious Beliefs).
As to the advantage of orthodoxy: Firstly, it seems likely that orthodoxy and monotheism are to go hand in hand, though not always and not necessarily. But one god means one way of thinking and lends itself to official doctrine. Secondly, orthodoxy promotes zealotry and an unwillingness among believers to bend belief structures to other religions, making them more likely to persevere when confronted with external pressure. Thirdly, monotheism and orthodoxy creates conflicts of religious ideology because now there is a 'wrong' answer to a spiritual question. Orthodoxy gives a reason to kill people for what they believe, or force them to convert. It is inherently more likely to survive because it is less tolerant of dissenting beliefs.