Early Humans?

Question

Did early humans settle villages in river valleys, and were they limited to a few climates?

Answer 1

You must be talking about the Neolitics and after because the Paleolithics didn't settle.

And where they settled was confined to areas with arable land, water source, and climate.

Hence your presumption seems to be the case.

Why do you ask; i.e. what useful purpose is this piece of info supposed to serve?

Answer 2

On the special Guns, Germs and Steel, which talks about the book from Jarrod Diamond, they mentioned something about that.  They suggested that one of the reasons that white people had a hard time establishing themselves in tropical Africa was because they tended to settle too close to rivers.  That greatly increased the amount of malaria.  The indigenous people learned long ago to put their villages far from water on higher land.  It isn't a stretch to assume that earlier humans who made shelters away from water would be the ones that fared better.

Answer 3

Yes, however before early humans ventured inland, they first traced the perimeters of continents, where fresh water ran into the ocean...

Only when they found a suitably-sized river, did they then follow it upstream, far enough that it wasn't mixed with saltwater, and begin to build settlements nearby, if the neighborhood appealed to them!

Answer 4

The early humans were the first humans, and no one knows when they first appeared. That makes the question unanswerable.