I was listening to a podcast about Native American history once and it just hit me: of course we think all the early advanced civilizations were in Egypt, Greece, etc. It's because they built with stone in arid regions.

North American native civilizations had trade, roads, writing, libraries, complex systems of law and jurisprudence, etc., but they built with the materials that were most abundant to them: wood, animal hides, bone, etc. Wood is an amazingly versatile material so if you have a lot of it there's no incentive to develop advanced stone construction or even a lot of metallurgy. The only exception would be civilizations like the Maya and Aztec that appeared to have monument cults, but not all advanced civilizations have monument cults.

Wood degrades over time though, and things like writing don't last anywhere near as long in a wet humid climate.

There could easily have been incredible works of literature and philosophy in all kinds of places in ancient human history. They're just gone.

I worry sometimes about our own civilization making everything digital. One mega solar flare and our collective cultural memory is as gone as the Iroquois writings on animal hides. Future civilizations will know nothing of ceiling cat.