It helps tremendously that the "scientific establishment" believes civilization started 15,000 years ago.
Pick a date that is much older than that and you better have extremely good science to support it or the establishment will ridicule you as a quack and pull your funding.
Pick a date that is much younger than that and you might as well be digging up your grandmother's grave. Nobody wants to hear about it. It's not newsworthy, and there goes your funding.
But pick a date, say right at 15000 years that is what the establishment believes is the beginning of civilization and then you have the ear of the news, as well as the ear of the scientific establishment. If you introduce anything at all that's new, you better make sure that your work enables enough of the establishment to say "I told you so". And your funding's assured.
As I recall, it's more like a bit over 6000, for civilization as in "real cities." There are places like Jericho that may have been inhabited earlier than that but they weren't very big. The whole Neolithic Revolution from the earliest domestication of cereal grasses is generally placed in the last 10-12K years, so the find announced in this article seems to be pushing the envelope. I say "seems to" because it needs a better article.
Pick a date that is much older than that ...
Pick a date that is much younger than that ...
But pick a date, say right at 15000 years ...
There was no predisposition for the current consensus (whatever it is). It was arrived at by following a preponderance of evidence. It has changed over time as the evidence picture changed. Nineteenth-century writers on Egyptian Dynastic history used chronologies which yield older dates than those now given for things like the initial unification of Egypt, etc. This does not show creationist-style dogmatic inflexibility.
But the academic establishment currently believes civilization started 5,000+ years ago in Sumeria. 15,000 years ago doesn't fit into any current theory. The archaeologists promoting this dating of the find are going against the established theory.