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A History of the World in 100 Objects

Factual: History

Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells humanity's history through objects

Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, narrates 100 programmes that retell humanity's history through the objects we have made.

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A History of the World in 100 Objects: Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC): Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool

Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool

Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC)

A History of the World in 100 Objects Omnibus

BBC Radio 4 - A History of the World in 100 Objects, Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC), Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool

Every object has a story; Neil MacGregor continues his material history of human society

Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells humanity's history through the objects it has made. Today he encounters the very first tool made by our ancestors

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.  In this programme, 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.  This obsession has long roots and, in today's programme, Neil introduces one of the earliest examples of human ingenuity.  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 human development springs.

Neil MacGregor tells the story of the Olduvai stone chopping tool, with contributions from Sir David Attenborough and African Nobel Prize winner Dr Wangari Maathai


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

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Neil MacGregor reveals the earliest objects that define us as humans.

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

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A History of the World in 100 Objects

Making Us Human (2,000,000 - 9000 BC)

Olduvai Stone Chopping Tool

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