What geographic feature was central to where and how the first civilizations developed?

new evidence is discovered.

oversights and errors are corrected,

new technology is applied to evidence.

genetics is the study of how dna works, the methodologies defining the new recent technologies allow scientist to have a panoramic view of the entire dna landscape, especially how genomes interact with their environment, including off course, factors outside their organisms.

thus is very possible the existence of both scenarios, where populations of isolated individuals have different genetic traits, and share traits related to genetic mutation, due rats can easily travel overseas using human transport channels. so scientists could get a vast number of data, including human interaction, evolution of rodents, health development, spread of infections, development of new organisms, how genomes evolve in different environments and so on.