My understanding is that prior to the Renaissance, the world was fairly equal. There were people living feudally and tribally. The feudal system (in its various forms) was practiced in many parts of Europe and Asia, but I don't know if it really existed elsewhere. I don't think any particular group of people had vastly different ideas around the time of 700-1400 CE.

Why did the renaissance spring up in Europe in particular and not elsewhere (or am I wrong, and it did happen elsewhere)? Why did the enlightenment springup in Europe? How are these events connected?

I'm just going to spitball a response, and you can correct me wherever you like.

• The renaissance and the enlightenment were the same movement, just spread out over a number of years because there were many dependencies in the chain of thought that lead from start to conclusion (you need Bacon before Newton, Newton before Gauss, etc).
• The movement was based upon understanding and controlling the known world. This had the effect of: (a) gaining knowledge unlike ever before, (b) spreading dominance throughout the world, aka colonization and statecraft
• The main reasons it happened in Europe: (a) monotheism, (b) lots of war. Monotheism causes you to want to do things for your god and seek to understand him. Polytheistic cultures tend to explain away all phenomenons with gods, so there's less reason to look into things; it's just god magic. Monotheism also generates the idea that there is "one true way", which is why you may want to control things according to ideas. Never before was this tried. War can potentially aid in the movement, as it provides both a lucrative motivation to have better technology, and it creates weary people who seek to reason more deeply about human nature than perhaps they would otherwise. It can also lead to a diversity of opinions, as perhaps the alternatives to a bunch of warring nations are either just one huge and happy nation under one banner or a bunch of small nations which are too uncommunicative and disinterested to ever cross cultural boundaries. It also creates different class structures than if the nations didn't have much war. I believe warring nations tend to have slightly more fair class structures, as officers tend to come from upper classes, which makes them live lives that are closer to the lower classes than they otherwise would. This may be why the Western upperclass traditionally cares a lot about athletics and martial arts (interestingly, not something you see in many other cultures). This class structure inspired more egalitarian thinking, which is revolutionary in the face of plain old feudalism. Perhaps this is the origin of humanism of the time.