Monday marks the US publication of The British Museum’s list of the 100 objects that narrate world history (including the Aztec double-headed serpent above). Details of the original project below.
IT was a project so audacious that it took 100 curators four years to complete it. The goal: to tell the history of the world through 100 objects culled from the British Museum’s sprawling collections. The result of endless scholarly debates was unveiled, object by chronological object, on aBBC Radio 4 program in early 2010, narrated by Neil MacGregor, director of the museum. Millions of listeners tuned in to hear his colorful stories — so many listeners that the BBC, together with the British Museum, published a hit book of the series, “A History of the World in 100 Objects,” which is being published in the United States on Monday.
Via: ‘History of the World in 100 Objects,’ From British Museum – NYTimes.com.
So what did they leave out? Well, from a Eurasian perspective, most everything since there is nothing in the 100 to represent the vast landmass (over 1/8 of inhabited land) until the Russian Revolution.
I was surprised that the Babylonian map of the word was not included. What better companion artifact to an ambitious material history of the world than one of the oldest remains of a similar ambition to map the world?
So what else did they leave out, keeping in mind that the objects can only come from the British Museum’s collections?