Possibly the first city in the New World, the Caral civilization, ca. 3100 B.C. The reason we even know of it is because of their clever way of building in a part of the world so prone to earthquakes that it would wipe out cities hundreds of times over during the millennia. How? 
It is believed that the city was constructed on elevated platforms whose infill functioned as gigantic seismic insulators, about 5000 years before we started doing it in the rest of the world. The infill was chicra, nets of reed containing round river stones of various sizes.
Woven by hand into different sizes and shapes to fit different stones, the shicra/chicra would dissipate the force of any earthquake, lessening the damage to the platform/foundation itself, and any buildings on top of it. We do this today too, but instead of reed we use rubber.
Of course, modern seismic insulation have very limited life spans, the best systems last 30-50 years, these shicra have lasted 5000 years or more and are still doing their work quietly in the deep.
Building giant platforms is far too labor intensive and collective for our modern building industry, but there are ways to scale this down to a size that works for self builders and small towns, by constructing building foundations with a triple system of shicra, shicra, wood.
Tests have shown that a plastered building of clay mortar and stone would survive even a stronger earthquake than the infamous 7.9M Ancash earthquake which destroyed up to a million building and killing up to 70,000 in several parts of Peru in 1970.
A small shicra foundation would cost almost nothing in terms of materials and can be taught to anyone in a half day workshop. A modern system of that strength (base isolated home) would hardly be installed for less than $10,000, probably much more, using unsustainable materials.
