The higher amount of ore minerals a country has the higher their economy will most likely be, they will be able to trade these ore minerals for other resources. The only problem is that you need to be able to defend your country, places in Africa such as Nubia and Nok, smelted iron, but many of their people were taken as slaves.
What brought the most benefits to humanity was probably the discovery of DNA. The history of biology came to be from Egyptian methods of medicines and native traditions.