People often settled along rivers because the conditions were favourable. In the fifth millennium BC, people began to settle in the Nile basin in Egypt and the Euphrates and Tigris basins in Mesopotamia. They settled along the river for strategic and transport reasons, and the river and its riparian area supported them through fishing and agriculture...

Since antiquity, people have built homes along the Drava. Poetovia - Ptuj, Slovenia's oldest town, grew on the banks of the Drava during the Roman period.