For tens of millions of years, rivers have continuously shaped the surface environment and profoundly influenced the course of human civilizations. Great rivers were the arteries of ancient civilizations. Almost all the fabulous heritage of human civilizations was nurtured by rivers.
The Yellow River and the Yangtze River in China, the Euphrates River and the Tigris River in western Asia, the Nile River in northeast Africa, and the Indus River in the South Asian Subcontinent are all known as the mother rivers of civilizations. For a long time, conscious enough mutual learning among these civilizations nurtured by great rivers was not easy, despite their continuous integration in the long history. With the development of modern transportation and technology, exchanges between civilizations have become more convenient. Now, human material and cultural exchanges can take place almost in real time, including different civilizations’ discovery and reflection of their own and others’ histories.
The "Civilizations of the Great Rivers"exhibition brings the relics of civilizations from the Euphrates-Tigris Basin, the Nile Basin and the Indus Basin to China, and exhibit together with the relics of the Chinese Civilization from the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin. This is a highly conscious dialogue among civilizations. The histories and cultures carried by these cultural relics, the rise and fall, continuation and conclusion, are enough to cause people to ponder the common destiny of human beings. Let’s begin a journey of appreciation and reflection in the deeper and wider space and time between history and the future through these cultural relics and monuments!