Ribbanah:
OK you’re right, I’ll change Slot Nr.1 in my list
5. BureaucracyI know, no one likes Bureaucracy (yesterday the secretary in the dean’s office of my institute made me almost run amok insisting on formal procedures), but let’s face it: it’s a necessary requirement for every bigger organization. You simply can’t manage a complex society or a big economic enterprise without it, whatever the bad effects of it are. I could imagine that if a Civ exceeds a certain population without having bureaucracy some cities fall off. (But that’s for another thread)
6. Modern Science I came to the opinion that S. Kroeze’s Empiricism explains well what I intended with that.
9. Leisure Industry Of course there has always been such an industry but it was very small before people began to have so much spare-time. As effects I imagine “Disneyland” or something similar as a city improvement that increases happiness and trade. Could also be set aside in favour of your Consumer Society (I really like that one)

S.Kroeze:
I completely agree with you that the Arts are heavily underrepresented in Civ. Maybe we should make an extra thread discussing this.
Trias Politica I agree that this is an advance but if you ask me this is simply integrated in the government forms.
Plough, Plant Domest., Animal Domest. Those three were surely great advances in human history but remember that your tribe starts in 4000BC, a date that has been chosen because it’s the beginning of the first civilizations, and those already knew all of this. These inventions stand at the beginning of a civilization, therefore your tribe already possesses that knowledge at the beginning of the game

Rufus T. Firefly:Public Education is a good idea, but just some comments: a)It doesn’t have to go along with Democracy. In Austria, during Absolutism, Maria Theresia made a public education system and in communist theories public education is a central point (Cuba has the second-best educational system in America after Canada [yes, that was a little offence dear gringos ]). I think Public Education itself should act as school in every city or “Universal Public Education” should be a minor 1-per-civ-wonder.

Some other comments:
The Geneva Convention seems to be a typical dud-wonder to me. Have you ever heard of a fighting country really caring much about that?
Hygiene I don’t think this is really an advance. The cities of the Indus culture, the Minoans etc. had good sanitary system whereas this has not always been that way in later times (look nowadays India)
Mythology Good one. I think I’ll really start a thread on “Arts”-advances and this will surely be in.

quote: II. Animal domestication Horseback Riding is already in the tree. Other animals have contributed much less (mainly hunting and entertainment).

'They provided meat, milk products, fertilizers, land transport, leather, military assault vehicles, plow traction, and wool, as well as germs that killed previously unexposed peoples.'

'In human societies possessing domestic animals, livestock fed more people in four distinct ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by pulling plows. First and most directly, domestic animals became the societies' major source of animal protein, replacing wild game. Today, for instance, Americans tend to get most of their animal protein from cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens, with game such as venison just a rare delicacy. In addition, some big domestic mammals served as sources of milk and of milk products such as butter, cheese, and yogurt. Milked mammals include the cow, sheep, goat, horse, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Those mammals thereby yield several times more calories over their lifetime than if they were just slaughtered and consumed as meat.

Big domestic mammals also interacted with domestic plants in two ways to increase crop production. First, as any modern gardener or farmer still knows by experience, crop yields can be greatly increased by manure applied as fertilizer. Even with the modern availability of synthetic fertilizers produced by chemical factories, the major source of crop fertilizer today in most societies is still animal manure -especially of cows, but also of yaks and sheep. Manure has been valuable, too, as a source of fuel for fires in traditional societies.

In addition, the largest domestic mammals interacted with domestic plants to increase food production by pulling plows and thereby making it possible for people to till land that had previously been uneconomical for farming. Those plow animals were the cow, horse, water buffalo, Bali cattle, and yak/cow hybrids. Here is one example of their value: the first prehistoric farmers of central Europe, the so-called Linearbandkeramik culture that arose slightly before 5000BC, were initially confined to soils light enough to be tilled by means of hand-held digging sticks. Only over a thousand years later, with the introduction of the ox-drawn plow, were those farmers able to extend cultivation to a much wider range of heavy soils and tough sods. Similarly, Native American farmers of the North American Great Plains grew crops in the river valleys, but farming of the tough sods on the extensive uplands had to await 19th-century Europeans and their animal-drawn plows.'

'Several domestic animals yielded animal fibers -especially wool from sheep, gaots, llamas, and alpacas, and silk from silkworms. Bones of domestic animals were important raw materials for artifacts of Neolithic peoples before the development of metallurgy. Cow hides were used to make leather.

Big domestic mammals further revolutionized human society by becoming our main means of land transport until the development of railroads in the 19th century. Before animal domestication, the sole means of transporting goods and people by land was on the backs of humans. Large mammals changed that: for the first time in human history, it became possible to move heavy goods in large quantities, as well as people, rapidly overland for long distances. The domestic animals that were ridden were the horse, donkey, yak, reindeer, and Arabian and Bactrian camels. Animals of those same five species, as well as the llama, were used to bear packs. Cows and horses were hitched to wagons, while reindeer and dogs pulled sleds in the Arctic. The horse became the chief means of long-distance transport over most of Eurasia. The three domestic camel species (Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, and llama) played a similar role in areas of North Africa and Arabia, Central Asia, and the Andes, respectively.'

'Of equal importance in wars of conquest were the germs that evolved in human societies with domestic animals. Infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, and flu arose as specialized germs of humans, derived by mutations of very similar ancestral germs that had infected animals. The humans who domesticated animals were the first to fall victim to the newly evolved germs, but those humans then evolved substantial resistance to the new diseases. When such partly immune people came into contact with others who had had no previous exposure to the germs, epidemics resulted in which up to 99 percent of the previously unexposed populaton was killed. Germs thus acquired ultimately from the domestic animals played decisive roles in the European conquests of Native Americans, Australians, South Africans, and Pacific islanders.'
(source: J.Diamond;'Guns, Germs and Steel',1998)

J.Diamond gives the following approximate dates of first attested evidence for domestication of large mammal species:
Dog ~10,000BC
Sheep ~8,000BC
Goat ~8,000BC
Pig ~8,000BC
Cow ~6,000BC
Horse ~4,000BC
Donkey ~4,000BC
Water buffalo 4,000BC
Llama/alpaca 3,500BC
Bactrian camel 2,500BC
Arabian camel 2,500BC

Though some of these dates are contested -especially his date of the domestication of the horse seems rather early- the picture he sketches is generally accepted. I also think he proves in a convincing manner the vital importance of the sheep, goat, cow, pig and horse, his so-called "Major Five". I do not support the view attributing excessive importance to the horse only. When forced to answer the question which animal was most important for human development, I would choose cattle.

Why Horseback Riding was a comparatively late development in human history

Horseback Riding:
'There was no reason, moreover, why Stone Age man should have identified the horse as potentially more useful to him than its equine cousins which we now know lack, for genetic reasons, the potentiality for selective breeding to larger, stronger or faster varieties. The early equus caballus outwardly resembled the still-existent equus przewalskii (Przewalski's horse) and the equus gmelini, the tarpan which survived on the steppe until the last century; all in turn resembled the asses, hemiones and onagers, in colour, size, and shape. Caballus, in particalar, with its short legs, thick neck, pot-belly, convex face and stiff mane must have defied distinction from the tarpan, which apparently resisted before its extinction all efforts to refine its appearance or performance.

Man seems to have approached neither driving nor riding through the horse or its allied equids at all, but via the cow and perhaps the reindeer. Cultivators in the fourth millenniumBC discovered that castrating the male domesticated cow, to produce the ox, gave them a tractable animal that could be harnassed to a simple plough such as men themselves pulled; the attachment of such draught animals to a sledge, in treeless environments like the steppe and the alluvial plains, was a natural development. Mounting the sledge on captive rollers then followed, and from the captive roller the wheel, rotating on a fixed axle as the potter's already did, must have evolved quite simply. A set of pictographs from the Sumerian city of Uruk, dated to the fourth millenniumBC, shows the progression from the sledge to the sledge-on-wheels in a fairly direct line. A famous representation known as the Standard of Ur, of the third millenniumBC, shows a four-wheeled cart drawn by four onagers as a vehicle for a king and a platform for his weapons -axe, sword and spear- on the battlefield. This cart, with its two-piece wooden wheels, descends from the solid-wheeled prototype, and we may suppose that the Sumerians had recognised the onagers as superior draught-animals -faster and more spirited than oxen.

As anyone who has kept a donkey as a childhood pet knows, this lovable animal has severe drawbacks. These characteristics, which no amount of selective breeding succeeds in altering, relegate the ass, with the hemione half-asses, to a menial role. As a beast of burden both its range and load-carrying capacity are limited; as a mount it is an animal of last choice.

It is therefore not surprising that, about the beginning of the second millenniumBC, the domesticated horse should have begun to have its role transformed from that of meat-giver to load-puller. Even the small horses of the wild vary in size, and while small mares of the Stone Age stood less than twelve hands at the shoulders (a hand is four inches), the larger stallion could exceed fifteen hands. Herdsmen had already learnt the rudiments of selective breedign through their management of sheep, goats and cows; to apply it to the horse was a natural step.'
(source: J.Keegan:'A History of Warfare',1993)

'No one knows for sure when the practice of riding on horseback first became normal, nor where. But early representations of horseback-riding show Assyrian soldiers astride.
Men occasionally rode horseback as early as the fourteenth century BC. This is proved by an Egyptian statuette of the Amarna age, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The difficulty of remaining firmly on a horse's back without saddle or stirrups was, however, very great; and especially so if a man tried to use his hands to pull a bow at the same time- or wield some other kind of weapon. For centuries horseback riding therefore remained unimportant in military engagements, though perhaps specially trained messengers used their horses' fleetness to deliver information to army commanders. So, at least, Yadin interprets another, later, representation of a cavalryman in an Egyptian bas-relief recording the Battle of Qadesh(1298BC).'
(source: W.H.McNeill:'The Pursuit of Power',1983)

The spreading of Thoughts (and henceforth Technology)
by travellers, trade, communication.

quote: Why Animal domestication was one of the most important developments of human history 'They provided meat, milk products, fertilizers, land transport, leather, military assault vehicles, plow traction, and wool, as well as germs that killed previously unexposed peoples.' ...

OK, you are using a broader definition of the term than I thought initially. From the dates you provide, however, it appears that the discovery was made before 4000 BC, so it has no place in my "Top 10".

Note btw that meat and leather should not be in the above list of applications as they already came with the older discovery of Hunting.

I have put the advance of "Herding" in the prehistoric era of my complete technology tree. The Plough also got a place. (Germs aren't animals btw, but one could use "domestication" without the restriction to animals.)

quote: Why Horseback Riding was a comparatively late development in human history ... Man seems to have approached neither driving nor riding through the horse or its allied equids at all, but via the cow and perhaps the reindeer.

AFAIK zebra's were used for riding in Africa quite early. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Horseback Riding had been invented, then forgotten, then re-invented a couple of times as needs and climate changed.