• Pipoca@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Civilization is not the same thing as a people.

    To also quote Wikipedia,

    A civilization (British English: civilisation) is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, a currency, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system).

    To quote a different Wikipedia article

    The Maya (/ˈmaɪə/) are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today’s Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region. Today they inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. “Maya” is a modern collective term for the peoples of the region; however, the term was not historically used by the indigenous populations themselves.

    In short, that sentence doesn’t say what you think it says.