A distinctly Western European perspective.
I would rate Narwala Gabarnmang as one of the earliest sites of civilization, personally.
> A distinctly Western European perspective.
Well, "civilisation" is a Western European word for a Western European concept.
Most early civilizations arose in the East (today’s India, Egypt, China, etc., not Europe but that’s the normal take on what constitutes civilization) else we verge on saying any human organization is civilization (which I would disagree with).
> Narwala Gabarnmang as one of the earliest sites of civilization
It is is a rock shelter with a ceiling held up by pillars that appear to have been deliberately shaped and arranged by removing supporting columns to create usable space.
It has one of the longest continuous occupation records anywhere (charcoal dates back over 45,000 years, with art possibly around 28,000 years old), and it produced the world’s oldest known ground-edge stone axe fragment, dated to roughly 35,000–65,000 years ago, predating similar technology elsewhere by tens of thousands of years.
However: no writing, no cities, no centralized state, made by mobile hunter-gatherer groups rather than settled agriculturalists.