While there are indeed "details" out there that have a great impact on the macro-dynamic, and even pose as blockers, history also provides us many counter-examples. The steel-making process has been invented and reinvented many times and in different places in an (arguably) independent manner. The same for sea-faring, writing systems, laws, and so on. They have all been different but did enabled progress more or less in similar way, and thus - are also details that it's fair to gloss over.