I searched yesterday for the long distance trade into the then known world of the Bronze Age.

When I read this Jstor article about "Bronze Age World System Cycles (and Comments and Reply)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2743750?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
I don't say that you have to read all the 47 pages, nor did I.
But by skipping through the article I learned how complex it is even to hint that there was already in the Bronze Age a world system mostly supported by trade contacts for necessary goods and as an advantage for both trading sides and so a cultural exchange too. A world system, if I understood it well with South West Asia as core and heartland? And these bilateral trade between regions making a chain allover the then known world with other bilateral trade between other regions?

In all that I didn't found much emphasis about the advantage of rivers, seas and parts of oceans (coastal shipping), although in my humble opinion and from all what I learned up to this day, that shipping, especially of bulk goods was more easier and less difficult than land routes. And as I see it, all great civilizations are "born" along rivers or near seas? Hence the interconnections between these civilisations economical (the source of their wealth) and cultural exchanges (the source of cultural and scientific enrichment) would then to have been a world wide interconnection via "rivers, seas, oceans"?