That sounds to me like "most contemporary scholars" are suffering from a misunderstanding of what "teleological thinking" would be (or else it's setting up a st

That sounds to me like "most contemporary scholars" are suffering from a misunderstanding of what "teleological thinking" would be (or else it's setting up a straw man). Teleological thinking would mean that there was a goal--either a goal of human beings, or a goal of God, or a goal of some thinking being(s). It's hard to see how a non-religious person could think of history as having a goal. What those scholars instead seem to be arguing against--assuming I'm understanding your explanation correctly--is that history has directionality, in the same sense that biological evolution has some directionality (thereby creating creatures that are better adapted to their environment, at least until that environment changes). Darwin's idea was to separate the two kinds of directionality, and provide a plausible mechanism for the one. Same in population density and technological advances leading to "civilization" (the point you're responding to). This is not teleology, this is a sense that hill climbing will eventually lead to a certain outcome (and maybe further outcomes in the future that we can't conceive of now). Whether this is true is, of course, a different question. But calling it "teleology" is missing the point.