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Comment by trabant00 | Hacker News Reader

> The fact that Great Zimbabwe is not as sophisticated as other civilizations of the same time-period

Then why call it "sophisticated"? Nobody would have had a problem with the article if it just stuck to proof of civilization. Even an extremely small enclosed area like this (not even a village) is still proof of people working together, ornaments speak for themselves, etc. That is clearly a civilization. They clearly had some engineering skill. But "sophisticated" and "triumph" are pathetic exaggerations which result in the exact opposite effect than what was intended.

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Because archaeologists call everything sophisticated including stone-aged hand-axes if they're comparing it to something less-sophisticated, such as the pastoralist communities that people usually think of when considering southern Africa. "Sophistication" in this context though, I think is referring to social complexity rather that strict technological sophistication. I have no comment on the use of the word "triumph", except that it's very subjective and the kind of thing I tend to ignore.

Might a civilization that lasts for thousands of years and leaves minimal impact be successful?

Synonyms for sophisticated:

baroque, byzantine, complex, complicate, complicated, convoluted, daedal, elaborate, intricate, involute, involved, knotty, labyrinthian, labyrinthine, tangled

My house is sophisticated to the point where doing any electrical rewiring is a pain. Hiding it all in the walls? Whose bright idea was that? And encasing nails in plastic for the nailgun? No thanks, I’ll use a hammer and try to spew less plastic on the ground. Et cetera.

I'm not sure if a joke is going over my head, but it seems that you're intentionally using the synonyms for the secondary definition of sophisticated [0], when in context the author clearly means to use the primary definition.

[0]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sophisticated

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