I clicked through to chips & bits and did a search on "civilization". Along with the usual suspects, a link to Civilization III appeared. They have a description and a few screen shots cribbed from the Firaxis web site, and show a release date of 10/01. Of course, they also list the producer as Hasbro...
I wouldn't put too much stock in that, C&B routinely ignore our requests to not list games for sale until we actually announce a release date. It took us over a month to get them to take Antietam off of their website even after we repeatedly told them that we were going to be the only outlet selling the game.