History in objects

BBC, A History of the World in 100 Objects

15min radio programmes
(with transcripts, via "related links" of each programme)



The Rise of World Faiths (200 - 600 AD)
* 43. Silver plate showing Shapur II (Iran)

... describes how an apparently secular image of King Shapur II hunting deer reveals the beliefs of the day, when the king was seen as the agent of god and the upholder of the state religion - Zoroastrianism (祆教).

* 44. Hinton St Mary Mosaic (Britain)

... explore what the object’s survival says about the state of Christianity at this time and what sort of Christ was imagined in Roman Britain.

Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC)
* 3. Olduvai Handaxe

And what I think makes this stone axe so interesting is how much it tells us, not just about the hand, but about the mind that made it.