Without worrying a precise definition of "civilization", I wonder if we haven't been a little agro-centric? I find that most focus is given to the people working land, as farmers. Hunting and foraging are seen as modes that must shift to agriculture for civilization to advance. Maritime people, herders, and traders appear as aloof from civilization or dependent on it, not as civilized or civilizing in themselves.
So in that view civilization grows from the peasant farmer, who grows from fertile land.
Contradiction: Natives of the Pacific Northwest had no agriculture. They planted absolutely nothing. Yet they had towns, massive orchestrated fishing and whaling industries, flotillas of traders, settlements and regions specialized in different manufacture, serfs, slaves, craft guilds, and aristocracy. I cant' see how their progress was restricted by the hunter-gatherer economy. Neither can I see how planting onions in the river delta would catalyse a great leap in their civilization.
As well many times in history agricultural societies have been dominated by non-agricultural groups, from outside or within, who were more civilized. We also see agricultural nations that remained relatively backward, apparently ploughed themselves into a rut.
I propose our view of history is coloured by sedentary landlubber historians.