Easy to answer by asking this question: why did the west have an industrial revolution. The answer is that we first had a financial revolution. Modern finance p

Easy to answer by asking this question: why did the west have an industrial revolution. The answer is that we first had a financial revolution. Modern finance precipitated the industrial revolution. So the question should be: why hadn't Middle Earth invented finance? My answer is that it wasn't an obvious or given revolution in the real world. You may as well ask why didn't Eukaryotes arrive 10 million years earlier. Some things are just random and improbable.