Sustained human development is often seen as a recent phenomenon, primarily linked to Europe's Industrial Revolution. This perspective has shaped much of our historical understanding, but it relies on a limited set of economic indicators with restricted temporal and geographic coverage. In this article, we introduce Cultural Production as a complementary proxy for human development, particularly suited to long-term and cross-regional comparisons. Cultural production reflects the extent to which societies enable individuals to acquire knowledge, develop skills, and contribute to intellectual and artistic life-conditions closely tied to education, health, material security, and institutional support. We construct a global dataset tracking 122,634 distinct cultural producers (e.g., scientists, artists, writers) and apply ecological methods to estimate the number of unrecorded figures, correcting for differential survivorship bias. The resulting measure enables a broader and deeper reconstruction of human development across time and space. Our results challenge the prevailing view that meaningful development began only in modern Europe. We confirm that Western Europe experienced continuous gains from the 11th century onward, but we also uncover sustained growth in non-Western regions long before the 19th century. Japan shows multiple developmental phases, including a continuous rise after 1500 CE. In China, we trace human development back over 1,500 years, identifying major advances during the Han, Tang, and late imperial periods. In South and West Asia, we reveal marked progress under the Abbasid Caliphate and the Delhi Sultanate. Cultural Production also enables estimates of human development for Antiquity, showing developmental peaks in Classical Greece and Rome, though these were not sustained. Altogether, our findings suggest that all major regions, including non-European societies, transitioned from stagnation to sustained growth well before the Industrial Revolution-some as early as 1000 CE. These results suggest a more widespread and earlier pattern of human development across civilizations than previously recognized.