[toasterlovin]

If it was just about crossing water, you should also have random large cities in the middle of nowhere, but if you start looking at all the major cities of the world on a map, they’re almost all on a coast or a major river.

[baud147258]

I thought that settling on a river is more for ease of access to a water supply than access to water as a mean of transportation. I may (surely) be wrong too.

[toasterlovin]

I’m sure that’s a factor. But most of the largest cities in the world are specifically on the coast or on a large river very close to the coast. You can’t drink the water in the ocean, so that leaves trade as the main driver (by my reckoning, at least).

[baud147258]

> You can’t drink the water in the ocean

Yes, that's why I wrote only about rivers, but I think a lot of the big coastal cities are built on an estuary too. My point was implementation on a river is not just for transportation, but also access to other benefits, like easy access to water. For coastal cities, they also have access to fishing (rivers can also give access to fish, but not the same amounts).