Maya and Civilization

The reality of the Ancient Mayan culture should be such as to
stimulate and spur the intellect/intuition of everyone, especially
archaeologists, into realizing that large buildings and excellent
mathematics and calanders do not necessarily make for what we call
civilization.  Just because archaeologists can find a culture by means
of buildings and pottery does not mean that said culture is worthy of
the label of civilzation.  Likewise, just because a people do not have
large buildings and pottery does not necessarily mean that they are
not "civilized".

What we call "civilized" depends entirely upon quality of the lives of
the people within a culture and how they treated one another and how
they treated out-group members.  Compassion is the indicator of
"civilization"; not buildings.