"The game of Civilization has nothing to with the players, everything to do with the map."

This was a quote from the youtuber CGP grey and it immediately struck a chord with me.

These days so many people from all over the political spectrum are obsessed with making an argument for "the superior/strongest race" they will cite one war or battle as a reason for white/black/native american blah blah blah supremacy.

Everything I know about history tells me that the various gene pools of humans are almost entirely alike and what really made different civs develop faster or be more or less moral or better at this or that were things beyond our control, namely the setting.

I was wondering if anybody had any examples of this happening. When CGP Grey said this he was talking about how the old world brought plagues to the new world not due to european's having stronger immune systems, but because Europe had livestock and dense cities where plagues can develop. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEYh5WACqEk)

I would add that the European dominance of the last few centuries was not the result of Europeans being smarter or more intelligent, but due to Europe being largely adjacent to sea which is always beneficial, and Europe having a "temperate broad-leaf forest" biome which is suitable for agriculture and mining lumber (far more so than desert).

Again in short, I am looking for examples of things that most people think is due to some purity of a culture but in reality was due to where that group of people were located.