"A History of the World in 100 Objects" (book interest!)

Today Amazon. com (bless their marketing little souls!) sent me link to market what they perceive as the "Best History Books of the Year". Book hungry me just couldn't resist the history topic and upon opening the link, my eyes lit upon A History of the World in 100 Objects. Zzzing, I opened the link to read inside and leafed through the table of contents and the first chapter offered as the hook and bait. Gold, gold, gold! What a gold mine, and I immediately put the book on my Amazon wish list.

The book is well laid out in time periods with great artifacts defining those times. I'd list the 20 identified time periods but this would be very unnecessary as Wikipedia has already done the work for me here. Wikipedia further explains that the book was initially a joint project by the BBC Radio and British Museum in 100-radio series in 15-minute segments over a period of 20 weeks. The segments were presented by British Museum director Neil MacGregor, who also authors his book by the same title. His topics concerning the ancient artifacts include "art, industry, technology and arms, all of which are in the British Museum's collections". These lectures are downloadable somewhere (according to Wikipedia) and my historian-anthropological soul is all enchanted!


An example from the book:

The 'swimming reindeer' (mis-labeled in Wikipedia as a 'sleeping reindeer') is the oldest carving in the British Museum. It was found at Montrastruc, France in 1867 and is thought to be 13,000 years old, carved from the tip of a mammoth tusk during the the last Ice Age. Little is known what the Ice Age art was used for but speculations include perhaps a means of communication with the supernatural world or even a charm to guarantee a successful hunt before the onset of yet another bitterly cold Ice Age winter. The two reindeers skillfully carved into the ivory seem mythical and supernatural; however, the overlap of realism does not fall outside of the equation for interpreting the art as the following picture of a swimming reindeer clearly shows a different perspective of the animal which provided food, clothing, tools ... and even contributed to art.