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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.

A History of the World in 100 Objects: The First Cities and States (4000 - 2000 BC): Early Writing Tablet

Early Writing Tablet

The First Cities and States (4000 - 2000 BC)

A History of the World in 100 Objects Omnibus

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Neil MacGregor explores early writing through a 5,000-year-old tablet about beer!

A History of the World celebrates the arrival of writing into our history with a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian clay tablet that deals not in poetry but in describing the local beer!

This week's programmes in the history of the world looks at the growing sophistication of humans around the globe, between 5000 and 2000 BC. Mesopotamia had created the royal city of Ur, the Indus valley boasted the city of Harappa and the great early civilisation of Egypt was beginning to spread along the Nile. New trade links were being forged and new forms of leadership and power were created. And, to cope with the increasing sophistication of trade and commerce, humans had invented writing. 

In today's programme, Neil MacGregor describes a small clay tablet that was made in Mesopotamia about 5000 years ago and is covered with sums and writing about local beer rationing. The philosopher John Searle describes what the invention of writing does for the human mind and Britain's top civil servant, Gus O'Donnell, considers the tablet as an example of possibly the earliest bureaucracy

A History of the World in 100 Objects: The First Cities and States (4000 - 2000 BC)

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

What happens as people move from villages to cities? Five objects tell the story.

Five objects from the British Museum's collection tell the story of the emergence of the earliest cities in the river valleys of North Africa and Asia

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A History of the World in 100 Objects

The First Cities and States (4000 - 2000 BC)

Early Writing Tablet

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