tl;dr
All maven POMs inherit from a base Super POM.
The snippet below is part of the Super POM for Maven 3.5.4.
<repositories>
<repository>
<id>central</id>
<name>Central Repository</name>
<url>https://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
<layout>default</layout>
<snapshots>
<enabled>false</enabled>
</snapshots>
</repository>
</repositories>