I've heard that the reason the Ancient Greeks were so influential in the areas of maths, science, philosophy etc. was that they were among the first (at least Western / European) societies to be wealthy enough that some people could be professional thinkers.
Assuming this is true, what was it about that society that made it so successful, as opposed to other early European societies?
There're various thoughts on this subject, with responses ranging from they weren't that special to the magic of democracy, to all points between. Prosperity is important but then the question just becomes what drove that prosperity.
Anyways this question asks about the "specialness" of ancient Greek, specifically Athenian, society, with an interesting answer from ancient Greece expert and professor u/Iphikrates:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/r2urd2/athens_a_small_city_of_250k_gave_rise_to_a/
This doesn't touch so much on the prosperity angle so I'm sure more can be said on that.