History of the World in 100 Objects

This is a BBC Radio 4 series I've been listening to (well the podcasts of the episodes to be technically correct). Collaboration between the BBC and the British Museum, it's presented by the Director of the British Museum, who has chosen 100 objects from the museum to tell a history of the world. Each episode covers 1 object and is 15 minutes long. You learn about the object itself, its history, sometimes how it was discovered, and what it has to tell us about history, development of human society etc. The objects are roughly chronolgical but each week has different themes, so it jumps about a bit. I'm a couple of weeks behind, so seen about 3 or 4 weeks worth so far, but it is really fascinating stuff. Here's a summary of the first few:

1) Mummy of Hornejitef - this is out of place chronologically, and seems a strange place to start, but is used to highlight some of the scientific techniques that continute to shed light on objects in the series. It's also the first object the presenter became interested in as a child.

2) Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool - 2 million years old or so, one of the first tools fashioned by humans, used to cut meat off dead animals for food and so on. Found in the Rift Valley in Tanzania, around where mankind first came from.

3) Olduvai Hand Axe - A stone axe roughly hewn, but roughly in the shape of what you would think of as an axe-head. Used for killing animals, cutting meat for food etc. It allowed humans to travel and take the axe with them to be able to start to hunt food. These handaxes were made for a million years or so and have been found all over Africa, Europe, Asia etc.

4) Swimming Reindeer - found in France and dating back 13,000 years, one of the earlist artistic objects. Carved out of bone/antler it shows that humans began to think more than about hunting and survival and started taking an interest in the world around them and wanting to express that through art.

5) Clovis Spear Point - stone spearhead dating to around 11,000 BC, thousands like it found all over the Americas. This is supposedly from around the time people first crossed the land bridge from Asia (Russia to Alaska) and began populating the Americas. The spear allowed them to hunt and spread out all across two continents. I said supposedly before, because I read a book (well half of - it was long and very in depth) called 1491 by Charles Mann (?) which challenged the hypothesis that humans originated in Africa, by positing that they evolved independantly on different continents, giving evidence in this case for the evolution of humans in the Americas. A fascinating book, but presumably Neil MacGregor (museum director/series presenter) either hasn't heard of this (unlikely) or doesn't agree with it.

More soon.