that's like saying the 18th century was more "civilized" because we settled squabbles with dueling pistols. people are still people and we are just about as civilized today as we ever were. which isn't saying much.
the analogy holds for programming languages as well as it does for anything else involving people.
Just a fanciful quote with some license. But one might argue the defn of civilization as applied to general programming with so much of it being commodity programming these days. Additionally, I believe an argument could be made that the long-term tyranny of the C bubble has actually retarded the advancement of the art.