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How much can you tell about a person from the things they surround themselves with? Or maybe I could put that better by asking: what is a person trying to tell others by surrounding themselves with certain things?

The answer is, probably quite a lot - it doesn't take a psychologist to spot that revving about in a flash car just might be the human equivalent of a peacock fanning its dazzling feathers.

This week on A History of the World we have five objects - from a chess set to an astrolabeÌý - that by their beauty, design and technological advancement were guaranteed to reveal their owners to be of the very highest status.

But more than that, as JD Hill explains, they clearly tell the story of just how connected the world was in AD 1100-1500.

On the one hand the Lewis Chessmen look very homely, very familiar - they're an absolute reflection of Medieval European society with its kings, queens, knights and faceless pawns - but on the other they also tell us a great deal about the connections that brought chess to medieval Europe in the first place.

Then there's the astrolabe that gives us a glimpse into Spain in the Middle Ages - it was made in a place where the three religions of Islam, Judaism and Christianity co-existed.Ìý

So, let's start with the Lewis Chessmen. They were found on the northernmost fringes of Europe, but they were made to play a game invented in India and brought to what is now Scotland along well-trodden trade routes. They're a luxury item and one that shows their owner to be a man or woman of the world, but they're also undeniably the product of a joined-up age.

In a similar way the 'stand-up and look at me' blue-and-white porcelain of the David Vases not only proclaims its owner's obvious wealth (this is expensive pottery), but also represents a new product that would be exported across the globe.

At the same time sophisticated bronze-working techniques, brilliant craftsmanship and imported brass were combined to produce lifelike and stunning sculpture, such as the Ife Head, for the rulers of one of the first city-states of West Africa. And in the Americas, the status of a Taino ruler - in what is now the Caribbean - was inextricably linked to objects like our ritual throne.

And of course - as anyone tapping away on their smart-phone these days will tell you - little says forward-thinking, sophisticated and well-financed like technology in your hand.

Step forward our astrolabe: an instrument that could help tell the time, locate stars and calculate longitude and latitude. And is, as JD points out above, also a product of a land in which the meeting of cultures resulted in major advances in the arts, astronomy, maths and science.

So, what are we learning this week? Perhaps it's that then, as now, status can be established, and indeed shown-off, by the objects we own. Or maybe there's a deeper point to make about the overall story we're hearing in this series.

From our twenty-first century vantage point it's easy to see just how connected the world has become: modern 'astrolabes' connect us to each with almost unbelievable ease. But as our story of the world carries us through the ages, the connections made in the past by ancient travellers and traders seem to pave the way for our now global networks. The longer the series goes on, the smaller the world starts to feel.