——考古專家嚴文明先生不認同的“長江文明”是日本人定名與界定嗎？
隨著長江流域考古發現的大量增加，長江流域文化與文明日益受到重視。
嚴文明先生撰文反對“長江文明”的概念及表述，他指出：“近些年，有的學者提出長江文明的概念。這個概念能否成立？有人相對來講叫黃河文明。這個概念能否成立？……我為什麼不同意叫長江文明呢？原因就是，既然叫長江文明，它一定是有一個可以概括出長江文明有哪幾個特點，它與黃河文明或別的文明有什麼不同？我們比較一下。如長江下游地區幾個早期的文化吧，馬家濱、崧澤、良渚文化也好，與長江中游的文化，如大溪文化、屈家嶺文化、石家河文化相比，當然有不少關系，但這個關系密切的程度，遠不如它與山東的北辛文化和大汶口文化的關系密切。至於長江中游的大溪文化等，與成都平原地區的以寶墩文化為代表的文化的關系，也遠不如這些文化與河南地區的仰韶文化和中原龍山文化的關系密切。所以，這樣劃一個圈，將關系不密切的劃在一個整體，而將關系密切的又劃開，顯然說不通。從這個意義上講，我覺得不存在長江文明這個概念。只有長江地區的文明，長江流域的文明，長江流域的多個文明。”（
blog.sina.com.cn/s/blo...2f3ih.html）
然而，不得不說，字面上而言，“長江文明”確實有些誘人。上海教育出版社2001年出版了學術著作《長江文明史》（葉書宗主編），武漢市人民政府以舉辦第十屆中國（武漢）國際園林博覽會為契機，興建長江文明館。館舍面積3.1萬平方米，其中展覽面積1.28萬平方米，2013年11月13日破土動工，2015年9月25日落成開放；填補了我國博物館行業沒有一個集中展示大河流域文明和武漢市沒有自然博物館的空白。（
www.changjiangcp.com/）
日本人編著的《Water Civilization_From Yangtze to Khmer Civilizations(2013)》（Springer Japan 2013）一書稱，他們提出了“長江文明”的概念並認為“長江文明”早於“黃河文明”一千年（The discovery of the Yangtze River Civilization was made by Takeshi Umehara, special advisor of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (IRCJS) and the author, in the winter of 1993 during a trip to the Yangtze Delta region. It was during a visit to the Luojiajiao and the Liangzhu sites (Fig. 1.1 :12) in the outskirts of Hangzhou city, Zhejiang Province, China, that Umehara fi rst noticed the jade wares placed inside the storage room of the Liangzhu Museum that had then been under construction. The quality of the jade wares convinced him that they must have come from a sophisticated civilization.……Our team decided to call this civilization the “Yangtze River Civilization,” the Liangzhu sites de fi nitely being one of its centers.
1.3.2 A New Hypothesis
The Yellow River Civilization has long been regarded as the roots of Chinese culture, and few have doubted it. However, our fi ndings lead us to question this conventional belief and to ask ourselves, “Could this civilization that existed in the middle to lower basins of the Yangtze River have been the true roots of Chinese culture?” Results of our studies have shown that the Yangtze River Civilization predates the Yellow River Civilization by nearly 1,000 years and was contemporaneous with the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations. It also is noteworthy that the area of the Yangtze River Civilization is positioned south of the latitude 35°N parallel like the other three great ancient civilizations, i.e., Mesopotamian, Indus Valley, and Egyptian.The above has led us to formulate a new hypothesis. The climate deterioration event initiated around 5700 cal. yr. BP gave birth to civilizations in the middle to lower basins of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, Indus River, and the Nile River (Yasuda 1991, 2002b ; Yasuda et al. 2000 ) . Might it be possible for the same event to have caused an ancient civilization to rise in the Yangtze River basin? If so, should it not be the Yangtze River Civilization which deserved to be included among the four great ancient civilizations, instead of the Yellow River Civilization, which did not appear until 1,000 years after the others?）（世界四大文明中，長江文明應當代替黃河文明，因為黃河文明落後於其他文明1000年）。