Comment by throwup238

Remember these are archaeologists using the word "civilization" as a term of art within their field. There's no universally agreed upon definition but in general people use the scale model [1] (you can see the scales that different authors have developed at the link).

It's not like we don't know about a bunch of different peoples that existed even earlier (i.e. Toca da Tira Peia is ~22 kYa), but the evidence we have of them is basically a few burial mounds and maybe some domestic structures, and that does not rise to the threshold of a civilization for the intents and purposes of archaeology.

[1] https://www.sociostudies.org/journal/articles/140526/