Having access to natural resources can accelerate the growth of your economy rapidly. We can see this happening in comparing ancient Western Europe to ancient China. While China was the global superpower economically and socially (due to it’s monopoly over trade in the Afroeurasian continent), Western Europe was still a series of barbaric tribes. Western Europe’s economy didn’t truly start to catch up to China’s resource rich economy until Western Europe started expanding outside of their own region for resources in other lands. hope this helps!
