Exactly!

We do not even need to plan for a long distant future. Our ancestors in the primordial warm pond did not either. Nor did the first humans in Africa. They just multiplied and, as they ran out of space and resources in their home land, they moved just over the one more hill. Before you knew it, they colonized the whole planet.

You can say that the existence of New York is pretty pointless for those first humans. And so it is. But it is not so pointless for today's New Yorkers. Had the first humans not moved out of their valley half a million years ago, there would be no New York today.