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Meeting with the Origins of Humankind

International Cooperation > Ekaterina Gamkrelidze
In the late 1970s, several friends from the Italian city of Rimini got together, having a desire to meet people from various religions and
cultures and present the best works of art, culture and scientific achievements in Rimini. This is how the idea of the Rimini Meetings
the meetings for the friendship amongst peoples was born in 1980.

or 30 years, during the last week of

August, Rimini has become an international center of culture under the
aegis of the Catholic movement, Comunione
e liberazione, where well-known scientists,
Nobel Prize laureates, people of various religions and cultures, famous political figures,
artists, writers, musicians and sportsmen from
all over the world gather at the largest inter-

national cultural forum. The event is supported by more than 200 partners and sponsors.
One topic each year unites people's stories,
presented in exhibitions, meetings, shows
and sports events. The meeting is attended
by up to 800,000 people and at least 20 nationalities. Events include around 130 meetings,
8 exhibitions, 35 shows and 10 sports events
over a territory of 170,000 m2. At least 1000
accredited journalists cover the Rimini Meeting, which has become the starting point for
similar annual events like the annual New York
Encounter and the Cairo Meeting.
Seven people work to organize the Rimini
Meeting with 4000 additional volunteers from
Italy and other countries during the Meeting
week to assist with setting up and dismantling
exhibitions. Volunteers use their vacation time
to work in Rimini; they submit an application
one year earlier, without knowing what kind
of work they will have to do. Only students of
relevant specializations can work as excursion
guides at the exhibitions, and they are pre-

pared by attending seminars on the relevant

exhibition topics over the year preceding the
Meeting. Despite the financial support received from sponsors, organizing such an enormous forum would be impossible without
these volunteers. They work until midnight
each day and despite this schedule, all of them
are ready to use a week of their vacation time
the following year.
The theme of the 2014 Rimini Meeting was
To the Ends of the Earth and of Existence. Destiny Has Not Left Man Alone. At the initiative
and under the curatorial supervision of archaeologists Prof. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati and Prof.
Giorgio Buccellati in cooperation with the Georgian National Museum, an exhibition was
organized to show why humans unite into
groups and how human society is formed.
The exhibition, entitled From the depths of
time: the origins of communication and community, illustrated the results of archaeological excavations underway at the Lower Paleolithic settlement in Dmanisi, southern Georgia

and in the city-state of Urkesh in south-eastern

Syria. The exhibition consisted of three parts:
Lower Paleolithic Period Dmanisi, Urban Revolution in the Urkesh Civilization and, Modern
Syria.
The presentation event of the exhibition,
led by Prof. Marilyn Kelly-Buccellati, Director
of the Mozan/Urkesh archaeological project,
held to a 3000-strong audience, was dedicated to the discussion of the exhibition topics.
The General Director of the Georgian National
Museum, Prof. David Lordkipanidze, delivered
his presentation From the depths of time: the
origins of communication and community;
the President of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, Prof. Thomas Gamkrelidze
spoke about the Previous Homeland and Migrations of Indo-European Tribes; Prof. Giorgio
Buccellati (UCLA, US) presented the results of
the excavations in Syria supervised by him and
Prof. Kelly-Buccellati; and Prof. Paolo Matthiae
(University of Rome, La Sapienza), Head of the
archaeological excavations at Ebla City (northwestern Syria), gave a talk about the origins
of the first cities in the 3rd Millennium BC. The
exhibition was very successful and was visited
by 21,500 people during the week. 700 exhibition catalogues were sold.
On the Rimini Meetings 2016 our cooperation will continue with an exhibition about
the Pre-Christian and Christian Georgia.

GEORGIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM

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