Why? Agriculture needs the proximity of water and the development of methods of irrigation in order to prosper. Agricultural societies were the basis of the first civilizations. In the Middle East, in China, in Egypt, all the first great civilizations rose and flowered in valleys with rivers: the Eufrates and the Tigris, the Yellow River and the Yangtze, and the Nile.
The end of the European Renaissance is usually considered the beginning of the "Early Modern Period", which was an especially fruitful time since it contained the Age of Exploration and the Enlightenment.
