> when we use the word "civilization", we are definitively talking about cities. Associating onset of civilization with 3-4000 BCE is a conclusion from present evidence, not a definition, and would need to be changed in the face of new evidence of cities.
The term 'civilization' is not really used at all among archaeologists, to be frank. You are correct in recognizing the link between the notion of civilization and the notion of cities, since both of these terms are ambiguous, co-dependent and ultimately useless. What evidence is needed to call something a city? Many settlements have been excavated dating to times before 4000 BCE which include features that would be classically referred to as characteristics of cities. If you were to follow the evidence, as you claim to do, the distinction between cities and settlements and between civilizations and whatever is associated with settlements (which is ambiguous as well!!) becomes meaningless. Only cranks really lean on this distinction as having any sort of significant meaning, which tends to be upholding a truly arbitrary notion of what constitutes a civilization (i.e. circular logic, with conclusions leading the parameters of reasoning).
> while it is possible, in principle, that GT builders invented all their stonework methods de novo, it is clearly much more likely that they drew on a long history of gradually more sophisticated stonework not yet unearthed, possibly elsewhere. What we know about sea level changes allows that much of such evidence may now be under water, although it could also be found in the Tepes yet to be excavated.
Where is your evidence for this wild claim? How is this clearly much more likely, when there is literally nothing but speculation to base this on?
> the rest
So much cherry picking and mental gymnastics going on here, I truly don't know where to start.