Forum focuses on promoting river cultures

Experts on the world's major river civilizations gathered this week in Chongqing to exchange their insights on how to protect and promote cultures.

Themed "Bridging Rivers and Seas, Sharing Wisdom of Civilizations", the 2025 Yangtze River Civilization Forum focused on protecting the Yangtze River's cultural heritage and deepening exchanges among the world's major river civilizations.

The event was cohosted by Chongqing and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Located on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Chongqing boasts key geographic advantages as a strategic pivot point in the national development programs for China's western regions and the Chengdu-Chongqing economic circle. It is also a connecting point for the Belt and Road Initiative and the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

Peng Jinhui, vice-president of CASS, said that China's residents should protect and promote the Yangtze River culture, which provides strong spiritual motivation for the high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt.

"The Yangtze River has always been an open and inclusive river, serving as an important channel for the exchange and mutual learning of civilizations," Peng said at the forum.

"It has fostered the millenniums-old cultural heritage along the river, nurturing the shared spiritual home of the Chinese nation," he added.

The event also attracted experts and scholars from the United Kingdom, Brazil, Egypt, Pakistan and other countries who study the Nile River basin, ancient Mesopotamia, Amazon River basin, Indus River basin and other great river civilizations.

"It is a very rewarding experience to see that they (experts working on the Yangtze River civilization) are trying to learn from the past in order to improve modern day life," said Magnus Widell, a professor from the University of Liverpool.

"As a Mesopotamian scholar looking at the Yangtze civilization, I see a lot of parallels and opportunities for research and collaborations, and I want to connect with them, and hopefully, sort of create contacts that may lead to long-term research collaborations."

The forum includes a series of cultural seminars and exchange activities. At the 2025 Longgupo Site Academic Seminar held on Wednesday, experts on the world's major river civilizations from China, France, the UK, Malaysia, Brazil, Pakistan and Argentina, gathered to explore the provocative hypothesis that Asia may have been a cradle of early human civilization.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the Longgupo Site, a pivotal location in the study of early human history situated in Xincheng village, Chongqing's Wushan county. Initially identified as a fossil site in 1984, it revealed human fossils and cultural relics the following year. By the end of last year, five rounds of excavations had been completed.

Paleomagnetic dating from 2022 suggests that the site dates back 2.5 to 2 million years in the Early Pleistocene period, making it one of the earliest known sites in East Asia. Its rich content provides invaluable study into the human origins and evolutions of humans in the region.

The Yangtze flows for 6,300 kilometers from glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau through Chongqing, Wuhan, capital of Hubei province and Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, before reaching the East China Sea in Shanghai.

The river has fed people living along its banks with a wealth of natural resources for thousands of years. One of the cradles of Chinese civilization, it is known as the "mother river", and more than 400 million people get their drinking water from it.