A History of the World was a partnership between the BBC and the British Museum, involving schools, museums and audiences across the UK. One can listen to and download all the episodes of the radio series A History of the World in 100 objects.
One hundred 15-minute programmes, each focusing on an object from the British Museum’s collection told a history of two million years of humanity through the objects we have made, starting with the earliest object in the museum’s collection.
My personal highlights included the following:
1. Mummy of Hornedjitef (-260BC, Egypt): status, legacy, journey beyond death (see image).
2. Olduval Chopping Tool (-2m, Tanzania): adaptable, can skin and butcher animals
3. Olduval Hand Axe (Tanzania): portable, you can travel; Best technology ever? First status symbol (bigger than it need be; beautiful according to James Dyson)
4.Swimming Reindeer (-13k, France): While all humans date from East Africa around -150k, about -50k we became pattern-recognising art-makers; ice age artists used various techniques - realistic composition, yes, but also abstract, schematised, even surreal; probably due to brain being able to combine thoughts about nature etc. an entering fully into the flow of life, of being at home in the world (perhaps one of the origins of religion and purpose, of wisdom and cohesion)
5.Clovis Spear (-13k, US): found in Arizona; seems so show that Clovis people (ancestors of Native Americans) all came from NE Asia - a problem for native traditions of sky gods etc. (hope i.e.. travel vs. home i.e. .stability)
6. Bird-Shaped Pestle (-4-8K, PNG): Birth of farming after end of last Ice Age; cooking; literally putting down roots; happened simultaneously in many different places (i.e. not only in Fertile Crescent) and people chose different crops in different places; if you were lucky you got surpluses, that could be consumed, stored or exchanged; sharing food (in families and communities) became and remained one of the most basic ways of binding people together
7. Ain Sakhri Lovers Figurine:(-8k, Israel/Palestine): First representation of a couple having sex; no longer just part of the ecosystem, we try to control nature; people bred grasses that could produce grain for bread, so people could store larders and create time to think "domestication of the mind"; love and celebration of sex act itself (rather than just representing fertility); difference between artifact (relic from a time) and art (communicates across time)
But what about the future? Which areas would we like to improve, and what kind of objects could represent our progress in each area? For me, topics to focus on might include: Food, Love, Loneliness, Friendship, Envy, Need,: Compassion, Acceptance, Simplicity.