Cities and civilizations are recent inventions.

This is not true. Cities and Civilizations go back to the time of the Agricultural/Neolithic revolution around 7 000 years ago. For example, we have archaeological evidence for cities from this time.

However, the question depends on the interpretation of "recent": compared to the time span of evolution from Most Recent Common Ancestor with Chimpazees (5 million years ago) : this is very recent.