They were close enough now to see the scarred rubble that had once been a thriving, advanced civilization.

The Old Ones had obviously once had a thriving civilization.

Devastation stretched for a thousand miles, where once there had been a thriving civilization.

Still, when Ibn Battuta arrived at Mali in July 1352, he found a thriving civilization on par with virtually anything in the Muslim or Christian world.

Long before the Spaniards arrived, Albay had a thriving civilization.

The tangled and fragile skein of inference in the historical record gives no certainty as to the origin of the inhabitants but the fact remains that for over two millennia a thriving civilisation existed at Hisarlik.

The Wanderer remembered with little interest that the barren world had once been home to a thriving civilization.

The Voormis are the three-toed, umber-colored, fur-covered humanoids that once had a thriving civilization in Hyperborea.

Ancient Rome - Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that began growing on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BCE.

This accounting of history is undermined by the Maya's status as the first peoples to establish a thriving civilization in what is now Belize.