Depends how recognizable you want the world to be compared to OTL... The farther back one goes, the more butterflies spawn. You could theoretically (but not necessarily) get a more technologically "advanced" world by...
- More domesticated animals/metallurgy in the Americas (though this COMPLETELY changes the Americas as we would know them).
- Avoiding the Bronze Age Collapse. Mind you, this would create a world completely unlike our own...
- Either doing away with the more mystical/"faith based" belief systems (i.e. early Christianity) in favour of more rationalist, proto-scientific philosophies/world-views OR alter the aforementioned mystical world-views to be more rationalistic. Also, you could keep the Islamic Golden Age going longer by A) Having the Mu'tazili and/or Isma'ili schools become predominant, B) Having the rationalists within those school triumph over the conservative reactionaries, and C) Keeping the major centres of Islamic culture and science alive and prospering (so Al-Andalus survives as a single entity, Baghdad is not temporarily erased, less political fragmentation in the Islamic world as a whole).
- More Industrial Revolution events in more parts of the world. Examine the factors that prevented the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia, and West Africa from developing as Europe did roughly from the 17th Century, and figure out how to circumvent them.