BBC - A History of the World in 100 Objects - S1 - Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC)

Neil MacGregor tells the story of two million years of our development through a hundred objects in the British Museum. We begin with the first that make us human.

Download Series 1 Here

Episode 1 - Mummy of Hornedjitef (18 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
At the age of eight, Neil visited the British Museum for the first time and came face to face with an object that fascinated and intrigued him ever since, an Egyptian mummy. Hornedjitef was a priest who died around 2,250 years ago, and he designed a coffin that, he believed, would help him navigate his way to the afterlife. Little did he know that this afterlife would be as a museum exhibit in London. This ornate coffin holds secrets to the understanding of his religion, society and Egypt's connections to the rest of the world.
Neil tells the story of Hornedjitef's mummy case with contributions from egyptologist John Taylor, Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif and Indian economist and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.

Episode 2 - Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool (19 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil goes back two million years to the Rift Valley in Tanzania, where a simple chipped stone marks the emergence of modern humans.
One of the characteristics that mark humans out from other animals is their desire for, and dependency on, the things they fashion with their own hands. Faced with the needs to cut meat from carcasses, early humans in Africa discovered how to shape stones into cutting tools. From that one innovation, a whole history of human development springs.
Neil tells the story of the Olduvai stone chopping tool with contributions from flint napper Phil Harding, Sir David Attenborough and African Nobel Prize winner Dr Wangeri Maathai.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.




Episode 3 - Olduvai Handaxe (20 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil follows early humans as they slowly begin to move beyond their African homeland, taking with them one essential item - a hand axe. In the presence of the most widely-used tool humans have created, Neil sees just how vital to our evolution this sharp, ingenious implement was and how it allowed the spread of humans across the globe.
Including contributions from designer Sir James Dyson and archaeologist Nick Ashton.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.




Episode 4 - Swimming Reindeer (21 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Found in France and dating back 13,000 years, this is a carving of two swimming reindeer - and it's not just the likeness that is striking. The creator of this carving was one of the first humans to express their world through art. But why did they do it?
Neil tells the story of the Swimming Reindeer and its place in the history of art and religion with contributions from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and archaelogist Professor Steven Mithen.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.



Episode 5 - Clovis Spear Point (22 Jan 2010)

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum.
Neil describes an object that dates from the earliest settlement of North America, around 13,000 years ago. It is a deadly hunting weapon, used by the first inhabitants of the Americas.
This sharp spearhead helps us understand how humans spread across the globe. By 11,000 BC humans had moved from north-east Asia into the uninhabited wilderness of north America; within 2,000 years they had populated the whole continent. How did these hunters live, and how does their Asian origin sit with the creation stories of modern-day Native Americans?
Including contributions from Michael Palin and American archaeologist Gary Haynes.
Producer: Anthony Denselow.

[Audiobook] [BBC Radio 4] - The House on the Borderland - by William Hope Hodgson

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In 1877, two gentlemen, Messrs Tonnison and Berreggnog, head into Ireland to spend a week fishing in the village of Kraighten. While there, they discover in the ruins of a very curious house a diary of the man who had once owned it. Its torn pages seem to hint at an evil beyond anything that existed on this side of the curtains of impossibility. 

This is a classic novel that worked to slowly bridge the gap between the British fantastic and supernatural authors of the later 19th century and modern horror fiction. Classic American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft lists this and other works by Hodgson among his greatest influences.

Author's Introduction to the Manuscript: 

Many are the hours in which I have pondered upon the story that is setforth in the following pages. I trust that my instincts are not awrywhen they prompt me to leave the account, in simplicity, as it washanded to me.
And the MS. itself--You must picture me, when first it was given into mycare, turning it over, curiously, and making a swift, jerky examination.A small book it is; but thick, and all, save the last few pages, filledwith a quaint but legible handwriting, and writ very close. I have thequeer, faint, pit-water smell of it in my nostrils now as I write, andmy fingers have subconscious memories of the soft, "cloggy" feel of thelong-damp pages.
I read, and, in reading, lifted the Curtains of the Impossible thatblind the mind, and looked out into the unknown. Amid stiff, abruptsentences I wandered; and, presently, I had no fault to charge againsttheir abrupt tellings; for, better far than my own ambitious phrasing,is this mutilated story capable of bringing home all that the oldRecluse, of the vanished house, had striven to tell.
Of the simple, stiffly given account of weird and extraordinary matters,I will say little. It lies before you. The inner story must be uncovered,personally, by each reader, according to ability and desire. And evenshould any fail to see, as now I see, the shadowed picture and conceptionof that to which one may well give the accepted titles of Heaven and Hell;yet can I promise certain thrills, merely taking the story as a story.

WILLIAM HOPE HODGSON December 17, 1907

Read by Jim Norton

Extra:

In 2003 DC Comics’ mature reader imprint Vertigo published a 96-page color graphic-novel adaptation of The House on the Borderland. The story was adapted by Simon Revelstroke and the art was done by comic book artist Richard Corben. The book is available in both soft and hardcover and contains an introduction by British comic writer and artist Alan Moore. 

If anyone has this comic, please send me a link in the comment box, I'd love to read it!