A History of the World in 100 Objects
Page 1
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Contents
Preface: Mission Impossible
Introduction: Signals from the Past
PART ONE
Making us Human
2,000,000–9000 BC
1. Mummy of Hornedjitef
2. Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool
3. Olduvai Handaxe
4. Swimming Reindeer
5. Clovis Spear Point
PART TWO
After the Ice Age: Food and Sex
9000–3500 BC
6. Bird-shaped Pestle
7. Ain Sakhri Lovers Figurine
8. Egyptian Clay Model of Cattle
9. Maya Maize God Statue
10. Jomon Pot
PART THREE
The First Cities and States
4000–2000 BC
11. King Den’s Sandal Label
12. Standard of Ur
13. Indus Seal
14. Jade Axe
15. Early Writing Tablet
PART FOUR
The Beginnings of Science and Literature
2000–700 BC
16. Flood Tablet
17. Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
18. Minoan Bull-leaper
19. Mold Gold Cape
20. Statue of Ramesses II
PART FIVE
Old World, New Powers
1100–300 BC
21. Lachish Reliefs
22. Sphinx of Taharqo
23. Chinese Zhou Ritual Vessel
24. Paracas
25. Gold Coin of Croesus
PART SIX
The World in the Age of Confucius
500–300 BC
26. Oxus Chariot Model
27. Parthenon Sculpture: Centaur and Lapith
28. Basse-Yutz Flagons
29. Olmec Stone Mask
30. Chinese Bronze Bell
PART SEVEN
Empire Builders
300 BC–AD 10
31. Coin with Head of Alexander
32. Pillar of Ashoka
33. Rosetta Stone
34. Chinese Han Lacquer Cup
35. Head of Augustus
PART EIGHT
Ancient Pleasures, Modern Spice
AD 1–500
36. Warren Cup
37. North American Otter Pipe
38. Ceremonial Ballgame Belt
39. Admonitions Scroll
40. Hoxne Pepper Pot
PART NINE
The Rise of World Faiths
AD 100–600
41. Seated Buddha from Gandhara
42. Gold Coins of Kumaragupta I
43. Silver Plate showing Shapur II
44. Hinton St Mary Mosaic
45. Arabian Bronze Hand
PART TEN
The Silk Road and Beyond
AD 400–800
46. Gold Coins of Abd al-Malik
47. Sutton Hoo Helmet
48. Moche Warrior Pot
49. Korean Roof Tile
50. Silk Princess Painting
PART ELEVEN
Inside the Palace: Secrets at Court
AD 700–900
51. Maya Relief of Royal Blood-letting
52. Harem Wall-painting Fragments
53. Lothair Crystal
54. Statue of Tara
55. Chinese Tang Tomb Figures
PART TWELVE
Pilgrims, Raiders and Traders
AD 800–1300
56. Vale of York Hoard
57. Hedwig Glass Beaker
58. Japanese Bronze Mirror
59. Borobudur Buddha Head
60. Kilwa Pot Sherds
PART THIRTEEN
Status Symbols
AD 1100–1500
61. Lewis Chessmen
62. Hebrew Astrolabe
63. Ife Head
64. The David Vases
65. Taino Ritual Seat
PART FOURTEEN
Meeting the Gods
AD 1200–1500
66. Holy Thorn Reliquary
67. Icon of the Triumph of Orthodoxy
68. Shiva and Parvati Sculpture
69. Sculpture of Huastec Goddess
70. Hoa Hakananai’a Easter Island Statue
PART FIFTEEN
The Threshold of the Modern World
AD 1375–1550
71. Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent
72. Ming Banknote
73. Inca Gold Llama
74. Jade Dragon Cup
75. Dürer’s Rhinoceros
PART SIXTEEN
The First Global Economy
AD 1450–1650
77. Benin Plaque: The Oba with Europeans
78. Double-headed Serpent
79. Kakiemon Elephants
80. Pieces of Eight
PART SEVENTEEN
Tolerance and Intolerance
AD 1550–1700
81. Shi’a Religious Parade Standard
82. Miniature of a Mughal Prince
83. Shadow Puppet of Bima
84. Mexican Codex Map
85. Reformation Centenary Broadsheet
PART EIGHTEEN
Exploration, Exploitation and Enlightenment
AD 1680–1820
86. Akan Drum
87. Hawaiian Feather Helmet
88. North American Buckskin Map
89. Australian Bark Shield
90. Jade Bi
PART NINETEEN
Mass Production, Mass Persuasion
AD 1780–1914
91. Ship’s Chronometer from HMS Beagle
92. Early Victorian Tea Set
93. Hokusai’s The Great Wave
94. Sudanese Slit Drum
95. Suffragette-defaced Penny
PART TWENTY
The World of our Making
AD 1914–2010
96. Russian Revolutionary Plate
97. Hockney’s In the Dull Village
98. Throne of Weapons
99. Credit Card
100. Solar-powered Lamp and Charger
Maps
List of Objects
Bibliography
References
Picture Credits and Text Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements
To all my colleagues at the British Museum
Preface:
Mission Impossible
Telling history through things is what museums are for. And because the British Museum has for over 250 years been collecting things from all round the globe, it is not a bad place to start if you want to use objects to tell a history of the world. Indeed you could say it is what the Museum has been attempting to do ever since Parliament set it up in 1753 and directed that it should be ‘aimed at universality’ and free to all. This book is the record of a series of programmes on BBC Radio 4, broadcast in 2010, but it is also in fact simply the latest iteration of what the Museum has been doing, or attempting to do, since its foundation.
The rules of the game for A History of the World in 100 Objects were set by Mark Damazer, Controller of Radio 4, and they were simple. Colleagues from the Museum and the BBC would choose from the collection of the British Museum 100 objects that had to range in date from the beginning of human history around two million years ago and come right up to the present day. The objects had to cover the whole world, as far as possible equally. They would try to address as many aspects of human experience as proved practicable, and to tell us about whole societies, not just the rich and powerful within them. The objects would therefore necessarily include the humble things of everyday life as well as great works of art. As five programmes would be broadcast each week, we would group the objects in clusters of five, spinning the globe at various points in time and looking at five snapshots of the world through objects at that particular date. And because the Museum’s collection embraces the whole world and the BBC broadcasts to every part of it, we would invite experts and commentators from all over the world to join in. Of course it could only ever be ‘a’ history of the world, but it would still try to be a history to which the world had in some measure contributed. (Partly for reasons of copyright, the contributors’ words have been left here essentially as they were spoken.)
The project was clearly in many respects impossible, but one particular aspect of it caused an especially lively debate. All these objects would be presented not on television but on radio. They would have to be imagined by the listener, not seen. At first I think the Museum team, used to the close examination of things, was daunted by this, but our BBC colleagues were confident. They knew that to imagine a thing is to appropriate it in a very particular way, that every listener would make the object under discussion their own and in consequence make their own history. For those who simply had to see them, and who couldn’t visit the Museum in person, pictures of all the objects have been available on the ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ website throughout 2010, and are now reproduced in this beautifully illustrated book.
Neil MacGregor
September 2010
Introduction:
Signals from the Past
In this book we travel back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans have shaped our world and been shaped by it over the past two million years. The book tries to tell a history of the world in a way which has not been attempted before, by deciphering the messages which objects communicate across time – messages about peoples and places, environments and interactions, about different moments in history and about our own time as we reflect upon it. These signals from the past – some reliable, some conjectural, many still to be retrieved – are unlike other evidence we are likely to encounter. They speak of whole societies and complex processes rather than individual events, and tell of the world for which they were made, as well as of the later periods which reshaped or relocated them, sometimes having meanings far beyond the intention of their original makers. It is the things humanity has made, these meticulously shaped sources of history and their often curious journeys across centuries and millennia, which A History of the World in 100 Objects tries to bring to life. The book includes all sorts of objects, carefully designed and then either admired and preserved or used, broken and thrown away. They range from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card, and all of them come from the collection of the British Museum.
The history that emerges from these objects will seem unfamiliar to many. There are few well-known dates, famous battles or celebrated incidents. Canonical events – the making of the Roman Empire, the Mongol destruction of Baghdad, the European Renaissance, the Napoleonic wars, the bombing of Hiroshima – are not centre stage. They are, however, present, refracted through individual objects. The politics of 1939, for example, determined both how Sutton Hoo was excavated and how it was understood (Chapter 47). The Rosetta Stone is (as well as everything else) a document of the struggle between Britain and Napoleonic France (Chapter 33). The American War of Independence is seen here from the unusual perspective of a native American buckskin map (Chapter 88). Throughout, I have chosen objects that tell many stories rather than bear witness to one single event.
The Necessary Poetry of Things
If you want to tell the history of the whole world, a history that does not unduly privilege one part of humanity, you cannot do it through texts alone, because only some of the world has ever had texts, while most of the world, for most of the time, has not. Writing is one of humanity’s later achievements, and until fairly recently even many literate societies recorded their concerns and aspirations not only in writing but in things.
Ideally a history would bring together texts and objects, and some chapters of this book are able to do just that, but in many cases we simply can’t. The clearest example of this asymmetry between literate and non-literate history is perhaps the first encounter, at Botany Bay, between Captain Cook’s expedition and the Australian Aboriginals (Chapter 89). From the English side, we have scientific reports and the captain’s log of that fateful day. From the Australian side, we have only a wooden shield dropped by a man in flight after his first experience of gunshot. If we want to reconstruct what was actually going on that day, the shield must be interrogated and interpreted as deeply and rigorously as the written reports.
In addition to the problem of mutual miscomprehension there are the accidental or deliberate distortions of victory. It is, as we know, the victors who write the history, especially when only the victors know how to write. Those who are on the losing side, those whose societies are conquered or destroyed, often have only their things to tell t
heir stories. The Caribbean Taino, the Australian Aboriginals, the African people of Benin and the Incas, all of whom appear in this book, can speak to us now of their past achievements most powerfully through the objects they made: a history told through things gives them back a voice. When we consider contact between literate and non-literate societies such as these, all our first-hand accounts are necessarily skewed, only one half of a dialogue. If we are to find the other half of that conversation, we have to read not just the texts, but the objects.