Be careful when you use a phrase like "throughout history" - human history is a very long stretch of time (homo sapiens has been around for some 200,000 years), and the period in which Europe was dominant was only a few centuries. To be exact, Europe only became globally dominant beginning in the 16th century, and this dominance had its apex in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and has declined since: so a relatively short slice of time.

If you look at a list of the largest cities in the world in the Middle Ages, you'll notice that nearly all of them are in Asia: Baghdad and Constantinople in the west, Kaifeng and Chang'an in China.

The reason for this was that the main axis of long-distance overland trade at this time was the Silk Road, which linked the towns and industries of China with markets in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. It was complemented by sea-borne routes of commerce, particularly the dense trade networks of the Indian ocean.

At this time, Europe was at the western edge of this Eurasian trading system - in this sense, it's wrong to think of Europe as a continent; it's more of an archipelago - and was connected to these networks of trade but certainly not central to them.

It was not until the 15th and 16th centuries that European powers started their own seaborne patterns of commerce that gave them more direct access to markets and resources: sailing along the coast of Africa to obtain gold and ivory directly (undercutting Arab middlemen), sailing directly to Asia to obtain spices and textiles directly (undercutting the middlemen of the Silk Road), and sailing to America to gain access to the riches of a hemisphere that was previously unknown to Eurasians.

It was the exploitation of these new forms of commerce that laid the basis for European dominance from the 16th century onward. But it's worth noting how late in human history all this happened.

I'd recommend Janet Abu-Lughod's Before European Hegemony:The World System A.D. 1250-1350 as an introduction to the Eurasian trading world during the medieval period.

What do you mean by "the climate not ideal"? Ideal for what?

It's worth pointing out that "throughout history" means approximately the last 500 years. Before colonizing the Americas and setting themselves up as imperialist powers the countries of Europe were generally considered backwards and underdeveloped in comparison to neighboring societies such as the Byzantine empire. The Roman empire was "dominant" but only within Europe and across the Mediterranean.

I think that I'm going to try to answer the question you are asking or mean to ask.

The simple answer is that Europe is a mass of inland waterways, peninsulas and islands.

Since it is so much easier to transport things by water than by land, Europe had a lot of opportunity to develop their water born trade and military ability on water grew from that.

With so much interaction with each other and other parts of the world ideas spread quickly.

I don't like the term 'European' as it's missleading. See, Portugal and Poland both are European countries but Poland got annexed by its three neighbours, whereas Portugal built up a trade system and colonies. Do you get my point?

Arguments have been made that the reason Europeans have dominated so much of history/the world is because Europe is/was a bad climate for human life. It required the development of new technologies in order to survive. Since they survived they developed new technologies. These technologies gave them an advantage over other groups, particularly in areas where developing new techs were not required for survival (ie. Sub Saharan Africa)