Diamond traces European success to having three things that no other continent had. Just 3. They had guns (which they got from the Chinese), they had deadly diseases they were largely immune to themselves (germs) and they had steel. 
So how did they get these things ? Sheer luck of where they lived. Europe and the fertile crescent gave them geographic advantages nobody else had. Of 16 animals ever domesticated, no less than 14 are from the fertile crescent. Living with cattle and the like - gave Europeans immunity to lots of deadly diseases (smallpox for example came from cows). The conquest of the Americas came down, more than anything else, to smallpox.
The region also had plants that, when farmed, provided massive amounts of energy for relatively little work. So Europeans had time for leisure-  and in leisure could develop things like steel. Neu Giuneans prime food source is a tree, which has to be labouriously pulpled into edibleness. It takes as much energy to harvest as TBC