Here is a post of mine from years ago. At the time, I pointed out the four biggest omissions from Civ were the Hittites, Teutons, Portugal and Poland. Strike the last two with later expansions, but the first two still hold true.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11447579&postcount=1
Frankly, I don't like this chart at all. As usual, super eurocentric and marginalizes China and India (each had GDP, culture and population equal to or greater than Europe for the entire history until industrial era), and completely glances over a lot of important civilisations (Central Asia, Persia, Sout East Asia, Islam beyond this "generous" short window) and general huge non-European civilisations and nations in favour of vastly overestimated impact of European countries.
Don't get me wrong, Europe dominated the world. In the industrial era and for last 200-300 years (economically) or 400-500 (technologically), but before it was "mediocre" as in "at best equal to civilisation hubs in other parts of the world" (generally Asiatic).
Also, I am Polish patriot and I think Poland being more visible on this chart than China and especially India is completely ridiculous; similarly, I don't think Teutons should be in civ game.
India has 3000 years of history and you could easily find there like 30 empires and cultures deserving to be put in civ series as
separate civilisations, yet it is unfairly simplified as one. If India can be treated this way - and I think of civ5 'civilisations' India had the greatest impact on the world history with possible exception of Greece - then Teutons, who have like 300 years of history as split of German civilisation, can be also simplified in game as mere part of Germany.
There are far more exotic as well as significant great empires/civilisations/cultures from all over the world to be included in the game than Teutons.
