I wonder though how much exploration helped lead to an advanced civilization. The exchange of ideas with different cultures was crucial as was the necessity to develop the technologies for exploration beyond navigation alone. It wasn’t until we broadly navigated the planet that we advanced so rapidly after tens of thousands of years of relatively isolated stagnation.
It worked despite not really knowing where exactly anything was positioned.
The Egyptians and the Phoenicians lacked the easily farmable land. Greece was fertile but a little arid, Northern Europe was harsher and riskier, but Rome was in a perfect sweet spot.
On the other side of the world China had the farmland but not the inland sea, so there was less motivation for sea-borne trade and exploration.
So it all started with a tradition that required basic materials science, knowledge of the weather, currents, and seasons, navigation by the sky, and the politics of war and trade across large distances.
And it didn't stop until we had explored the entire planet and taken the first steps into space.
In between we had to learn about time, navigation, and planetary weather patterns, how to build and power better ships, and more complex politics.
It seems like a very natural progression.
Western culture didn’t develop very quickly - the geography had humans for tens of thousands of years before culture developed quickly. Other parts of the world actually developed relatively advanced civilizations long before Europe.
I think once it began to develop it developed quickly partially due to the geography, but it was also through trade with the Middle East and Asia, which were the sources of a lot of the technology bootstrap priming Europe to develop rapidly. It’s indisputable that once the ball really began rolling Europe brought us to the modern age rapidly. But I’m dubious of the geography argument personally since it was so late in developing relative to other societies, including those in the americas.
China actually was an advanced maritime society, with expeditions across most of the world including to the Americas. In fact in the 1400s China was the world’s most powerful navy.