What I find interesting, though, is the placing of human development around a system of huge lakes, as that lends further credence to the Aquatic Ape theory - that we originally developed around a watery environment.
Well, this is an attempt to trace back to the 'birthplace' of mitchondrial eve at around about 200,000 years ago. Our ancestors were likely as hairless as we were a lot further back in time. From memory (of scientific work, not the that I am as old as Methuselah
) I think that if we were to go back a million years you might mistake the apes walking about as naked humans. (But likely they wouldn't be able to 'talk' to you, nor have your reasoning powers as our ancestors brains were still in development)
I agree with
@Parson, bodies of fresh water will have easy to access food sources, potable water (which would be key for a species like ours who relied on perspiration to cool and long distance running to hunt) and one assumes that vegetation around the place would be lusher than a dry grass plain and therefore full of useful things. Possibly predators were less of an issue, (I say, thinking aloud!) , some would have been more focused on savannah herbivores so possibly never really seen (unless a big herd of things turned up), but we had things like fire and tools pretty much worked out by ~200,000 BCE I'm sure. Still have to deal with crocs, angry hippos and the prowling leopard I suppose.
It's clear we liked beaches and coastlines, although a great deal of the evidence is lost forever because of varying sealevel changes up and down over these vast time periods. But a great deal of evidence seems to suggest it was for the ease to gather protein and travel - remember that when we did get 'out of Africa' it's clear that the main highway was the coastline, something that has only really been broken since the advent of roads, good land transport and airplanes. I also wonder if the sea coastline might have had far fewer dangers like predators about?