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So last night was the launch of the official book of the series. I managed to snag a ticket to the event at the British Museum in which Neil MacGregor and Mark Damazer looked back at how the series happened and what they feel it managed to achieve.

As Neil put it: “None of us can quite remember how it all began; there is a certain creation myth that has grown around it at the museum.” Mark Damazer admitted that the germ of the project had appeared around five years ago – and I thought that just the last year had been exhausting.

There were some insights into the process at the museum that led to the selection of the objects. It seems that half the museum must have been involved in the decisions at some point.

Neil said the process involved himself and the three main series curators meeting up with at least five other “curators of the week”, who represented individual collections within the museum. Between them they would then thrash out “what theme you might choose around, say, the year 800 AD that would allow you to talk about objects from Europe, Asia, the Americas and the Middle East.” (You can find out what they settled on here.)

What I took away from the evening is that the scale of the project and the decisions that arose from the central concept, that this had to be a world history, took even the museum team by surprise. Or, as Neil put it, “The shock when we realised that the Roman Empire would have one object; the Renaissance would have one object.”

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Those decisions led to a series that looks at cultures some of which I certainly knew little or nothing about. So it was gratifying to hear that the same had happened to the team behind it, including Neil:

I don’t know about your education but mine had very little about the Yemen in the early Christian era. It had simply never occurred to me to think: ‘what was happening in Yemen in 200-300AD?’

Me neither, but now I have some idea thanks to the Arabian bronze hand that was chosen among the 100 objects. Similarly, I now know something about the Huastecs, the Indus civilisation and the Tang dynasty. It has been a very long journey of discovery.

And now it’s a book. The thing that struck me is the size of it; around 650 pages plus another 50 pages of bibliography, index, references, etc. Just the weight of it reminds you of the epic nature of the series.

Fortunately, just like the radio series, it’s in bite-sized chunks, so you can rest your arms every 400 years or so.

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Since the series ended on Friday, we’ve had a few questions about how long the programmes will be available for and the best way to get hold of them.

The good news is that all the programmes – every single episode – are going to be available online for at least the next two years.

That means you can listen again on the page for each object, or via iPlayer, or download an episode to your pc or media player. Of course the great thing about downloading them is that they are then yours to keep.

Several people have also been asking if there is any way for them to download all 100 episodes without having to right-click on each one and ‘Save as’.

I can see how that might quickly get a little tiresome but I have good news for you here too. You can indeed download them all in one go by subscribing to A History of the World as a podcast. That way you can choose to ‘Get all’ episodes and all them will be downloaded in one big rush.

The ±«Óătv Podcasts pages have help with subscribing to podcasts – as well the ever-present terms and conditions.

So you’ve no excuse not to catch up on the ones you’ve missed and indeed collect them all and start all over again - two million years ago in the Olduvai gorge.

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So that's it. That's all 100 objects. All finished. Two million years ofÌę human history in just 100 things that our ancestors made and left behind.

So which was your favourite object? You can't remember? Well luckily for you we have something to nudge your memory.

For those of you struggling to think as far back as the clovis spear point or King Den's sandal label, here is a reminder for you. Allow us to present: A History of the World in Five Minutes.

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We’ve had a number of curators on the blog over the last few months looking at objects from their own collection as well as ones added by you. Then someone pointed out that the ±«Óătv has its own collection and we should get some of those objects onto the site.

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Robert Seatter, the Head of ±«Óătv History, kindly responded to our call and has uploaded some of the objects from the ±«Óătv’s long broadcasting history. He’s also picked out a few of his favourites and the stories behind them.

Collections are funny things – occasionally purpose-built, but all too often accrued organically by happenstance.

The ±«Óătv has been a bit of a schizophrenic ‘collector’ in its long history. Its written archives reflect an essentially bureaucratic set up, with scrupulously stored minutes of meetings, annual reports and correspondence, while its TV and radio programmes were ephemeral, here-and-gone products. The early radio programmes were saved, for example, only by being stashed in a conscientious producer’s bottom drawer!

As for ±«Óătv artworks and artefacts, these have only latterly been collected with coherence, as interest in them has grown and grown. Here are a few gems from that collection


Of course, we’d have to begin with the iconic ±«Óătv microphone, with its rather grand nomenclature: AXBT! Now, it’s a very symbol of the ±«Óătv, from its multiple depictions in the early days of radio - as announcers and singers, often be-suited and bow-tied, appeared behind them.

We had one out latterly at the behest of the President Sarkozy and the French Embassy, who were after the microphone used by General de Gaulle in his famous ±«Óătv broadcast to occupied France in June 1940. They gasped as we produced its pristine and shiny metallic form!

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A little earlier in 1933, Eric Gill captured the new magic of broadcasting in the lyricalÌę statuary of Ariel and Prospero.

This stands above the entrance to Broadcasting House in London, and is one of the loveliest artworks commissioned by the ±«Óătv. Notorious in its day for the brazen nakedness of the boy Ariel, the statue attracted mythologies all of its own.

Like the story of the sculpture behind the sculpture
When the statue was being cleaned, we tested this one, and found to our delight that there was indeed something carved on the flat back of Prospero: the head of a beautiful girl. No-one knows who she was.

And of course, the collection also fascinates itself with the evolution of the ±«Óătv brand. It’s hard to believe now that in the ±«Óătv’s early days there was no formal ±«Óătv logo. It grew out of a sequence of decorative motifs – via the first TV on-air branding: the famous Bat’s wings logo (designed by Festival of Britain designer, Abram Games in 1953).

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We also have in the collection that famous revolving globe, which so many of us grew up watching.

Here’s the simple mechanical box which created it in 1963, when the world was still black and white, and when we saw the globe turning and reflected flat behind it via a simple mirror wall.

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• Take a look at the rest of the ±«Óătv objects, including the various Blue Peter badges, a Dalek mould, the Mastermind buzzer and a Blattnerphone.

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So, this is it: after 10 months, 95 objects and 1,425 minutes of history on the radio, it’s the final week and our story has at last caught up with us.

But what a story
 the past century has brought immense change - the way we live has been altered at an unprecedented speed in part due to new technologies, new materials, and consumption of material goods.

Over the last 100 years we’ve made more objects as a species than ever before - it has even been suggested that more objects have been made in the last 100 years, than in the preceding two million put together. For a vast archive of evidence just explore the objects you’ve uploaded to this site that were made in the last few decades.

For JD Hill, lead curator of the series, this has presented a great challenge:

Many listeners have asked how do we do justice to the last 100 years with five objects, especially, as this history is so well known to many. Should the objects be those associated with big events, or do you go for objects to do with underlying historical processes?

Although, in reality, choosing five objects to explore the last 100 years is not more difficult than choosing five to explore the second millennium BC. It has been about finding five objects that tell strong stories, unexpected stories and stories told through the things themselves.

So what objects have been chosen?

Our Russian plate explores how images and objects express the power of totalitarian regimes. In this case, the Bolshevik revolution in which propagandists painted over porcelain made by the previous imperial regime to make a statement about the communist future they were building towards.

A print by British artist David Hockney showing two men relaxing in bed together is used to discuss, sexuality and the rights of the individual to live as they choose.

In the Throne of Weapons we’re given an eloquent and poignant lesson in the horror of the wars played out in Africa, as Europe’s colonial empires came to an end. The cold war era weapons in the chair remind us that some of those African wars were in part fuelled, funded and facilitated by external forces. Many, many thousands have died, but another message in this seat is about reconciliation and the desire to begin building a future in peace.

Money has remained a constant through the series and a credit card speaks of our cashless world in which funds can change hands without being touched.

And, of course, our 100th and final object: the solar-powered lamp and charger. This object describes the challenges and ingenuity of today while also pointing to a possible future of renewable, non-polluting energy: kinder to our planet, and potentially liberating for the developing world.

So, without objects where would we be? Humans have always made, used and depended on things. They’ve been our ticket to the top of the food chain. They’ve enabled us to prosper in every single environment on the planet we occupy (even underwater!) not to mention beyond it.

So if there’s one message I’d like to sign-off with it’s that objects are powerful things - powerful because through them we can explore and understand ourselves.

• The photo of a junk shop in Kyoto is by and is used .

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... it’s a solar-powered lamp and charger. Like many of you – I’m sure – I was eagerly awaiting the unveiling of the artefact that would tell the final chapter in our history of the world in 100 objects.

We did our best to build the tension by revealing a shortlist of contenders. Through them we offered what Neil MacGregor and the rest of the team have identified as some of the key issues of the times in which we live.

The final object in many ways combines some of those key ideas: it’s a mass-produced item you could buy across the world; it uses technology to potentially change lives in the developing world; and it can provide a clean, independent and ultimately free source of power to make such transformative tools as mobile phones work.

But this one goes further. This one tells us not only about the current chapter in human history but also about the next one.

Unveiling his choice, Neil MacGregor described how the first stone tools made two million years ago by our earliest ancestors allowed us to gain control of our lives and our environment. Fast forward – a lot – and in the twenty-first century, that’s what this impressive, but simple, piece of kit has the potential to do:Ìę

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We felt that this was a kind of tool that – like the stone chopping tool – is really going to change lives, to change the way we think and the way we are.

And why? This clean source of renewable energy offers many parts of the developing world power – often for the first time:

You don’t need mains electricity. Everywhere that has sunshine has access to power. This means the poorest parts of the world now have a choice.

It can’t be cut off by local authorities. It allows a family to live in a certain way. The light doubles their day. It allows everyone to have the same access to light which until now has been available only to the urban elite.

That’s a powerful and transformative thing when you think about it. Being able to flick on a light means time to study, it means cooking without needing to use dangerous and expensive kerosene to light the kitchen.

Yet also by having the means to charge a mobile phone it connects you to the rest of the world. The potential for what that can do is enormous: connectivity through communication and access to knowledge on a previously unimaginable scale in many parts of the world.

That fact alone can change lives on a huge scale. It also, as Neil points out, connects us to our very oldest ancestors:

It’s of course about capturing the sun – that’s the oldest myth of every culture in the world. You can take the sun and use it whenever you want. The myths in Ancient Egypt, and every culture, are now reality.

This morning, looking back at the story he has been telling for the last 10 months, Neil recalled the words of Amartya Sen, professor of economics and philosophy, who spoke on the first programme in the series:

There is no sense in talking about world cultures or world histories. There is a world culture and a shared history. As we are going to have a shared future it’s worthwhile talking and thinking about that shared history.

For me, this object encapsulates much of what that statement is saying. It connects with our shared history, but also points to our future. And really, what better way is there to finish our story of humanity than that.

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Evan Davis introduces Neil MacGregor, announcing the British Museum's 100th object live on the Today programme and unveiling the object in its display box.

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=======================ÌęÌę UPDATE - 11.32AM 14.10.2010 ÌęÌę ========================

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Watch a video of Neil MacGregor unveiling the 100th object in the British Museum and live on the Today programme.

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=======================ÌęÌę UPDATE - 07.45AM 14.10.2010 ÌęÌę ========================

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The 100th object is the solar-powered lamp and charger.

It's an object that can bring electricity those who have never had it before, and may point the way towards a more sustainable source of power for all of us in the future.

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The British Museum is revealing their 100th object at 7:45am on this morning’s . We’ve been looking at the five contenders this week but the final choice is still a mystery. All we know is that it’s “an object that tells the story of the ingenuity and the challenges that shape humanity in the 21st century.”

Looking at the five contenders, which of them best fits that description? You can argue that they all show some degree of ingenuity, though in the case of the pestle and mortar it’s the pretty basic kind of hitting rocks together, so I’m not sure that the ingenuity part is going to help us much.

I feel like it’s the ‘challenges of the 21st century’ that is going to be key to the final choice, so what challenges do each of these objects help define?

The football shirt has attracted a lot of discussion from football fans about whether it should have been a British footballer, such as Ryan Giggs or Steven Gerrard, but the 21st century challenge that it describes is the one of a globalised economy. This is an English football shirt for an Ivory Coast footballer made by a German sportswear company in China. That is a lot of nations with an investment in one shirt.

On the other hand, the pestle and mortar can also tell a story about globalisation. It tells us how it’s more than just goods and currencies that move between countries in a global economy; cultures and traditions travel too.

Then there’s the mobile phone, which shows how the large parts of the world currently left out of globalisation might be given access to the instant communication and spread of knowledge that the global market relies on.

Meanwhile, I think the solar-powered lamp and the Antarctic clothing both represent a different challenge of the 21st century: climate change.

The Antarctic clothing is needed by the scientists who are taking the climate measurements that may be driving the political and economic landscape by the end of the century.

But perhaps the solar-powered lamp and charger shows a route forward with technology that can bring us electricity from more sustainable, less polluting sources.

As a comment on the blog pointed out, the solar lamp also highlights how our entire modern infrastructure is built around electrical power.

From manufacturing plants, to computer design, to mobile communication, to a simple light for reading; without electricity there is no modern world. For that reason, from the contenders I would pick the solar-powered lamp as the 100th object.

But I also know that ‘global trade’ has been one of the key themes of A History of the World in 100 Objects, so I have a feeling that the final object might be the mobile phone. As David said on the blog on Saturday:

Now fishermen in Kerala, India, can use mobiles to check out where the best prices might be paid for their catch; farmers in Tanzania can sign-up to a text-messaging service that’ll keep them updated on the weather forecast, and small businesses across Africa can transfer their money through the air.

The mobile phone has also been the most popular choice by you in the suggestions for your 100th object, so maybe there is a nice synchronicity going on.

The announcement is around 7:45am and I’ll be there to see what Neil MacGregor reveals as the 100th object in our series. I’ll let you know as soon as that sheet comes off the display box.

What do you think? Add a comment

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Tomorrow we will find out what the British Museum has chosen for its 100th object. It will be one of the five contenders that have been announced over the course of the last week: a football shirt, a mobile phone, some Antarctic clothing, a solar-powered lamp and charger and a pestle & mortar.

However, while we’ve been waiting to find out what the British Museum’s 100th object is, we’ve been asking you what your 100th object would be.

We’ve had a great response, and people have been discussing the idea of an object that sums up life today across ±«Óătv radio; from Greg James’s listeners on Radio 1 to Collins and Herring’s Nerd Army on Six Music.

Broadcasting House kicked us off on Radio 4 on a Sunday with objects including an International Red Cross collection box, an iPad and a botox needle.

That seems like a pretty good summary of the fantastic suggestions that you’ve given us; from the thought-provoking, to the zeitgeist grabbing, to the satirical.

I wanted to give a flavour of what you’ve been sending in, so I thought I’d list a few of our favourite suggestions in similar sets of three. So here you go:

A sheet of foam rubber from a flip-flop factory in China (which is now part of a worker’s roof), a grain of genetically modified wheat and an empty purse.

A UN helmet, the large hadron collider and some Jedward merchandise.

An antibiotic pill, a memory stick and the cap on the BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

An AK-47 rifle, a cctv camera and a can of energy drink.

I think that gives a taste of the range of objects that you have nominated. However, there are a few that have clearly been more popular than others.

Plastic bags and bottles of mineral water were regularly suggested as examples of our wasteful lifestyles, and the wind turbine was a popular nomination as an object that could define our future.

But the two suggestions that have been made most frequently are a mobile phone - or smartphone - and a pc or laptop. And, as you may have guessed, the reasons given for these choices were mostly about connecting to the internet.

It’s easy to understand why. The internet is undoubtably one of the transformative technologies of our age. It’s already had a huge impact on our lives and yet we are really only just beginning to understand the effects that 24-hour access to unlimited information and a permenant record of our lives online may have over the coming decades.

We already see how it’s quickly become an important part of many people's daily life but we don’t yet know how important or where it will lead. Who knows what that smartphone or pc will enable us to do next year?

Tomorrow we find out what the British Museum’s choice of object is and there is a mobile phone among the five contenders. So maybe the power of the web even extends to predicting the future.

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• The photo of people using their phones and laptops in a park is by and it's used .

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It’s the final day, and we come to the last of the contenders that may be the 100th object in the A History of the World series.

So far we’ve seen a lamp powered by renewable energy, a mobile phone from Africa, an Antarctic suit, and a football shirt.

What’s missing from that list? Yes, it’s food.

Looking back over the previous 99 objects, there are a surprisingly large number that relate to food. In the first 10 alone, we had a stone tool used to chop food, a spear point used to kill it, and a pot used to cook it.

This object is a stone pestle and it looks like it’s considerably older than the other objects on our shortlist. It’s not, but in many ways it is timeless. It’s the kind of object we could have featured in pretty much any one of the 19 weeks in which we’ve broadcast this series so far.

So, what’s it doing here?

Well, this pestle is from Bangladesh, but was given to the British Museum this year by someone living in London. It’s true that in 2010 we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing what we fancy for our dinner. Among the reasons for that are scale and speed of migration in the twenty-first century.

More of us are moving from one part of the world to another than at any other time in history. Millions of us in fact. And as we move from one place to another – often for political or economic reasons – we tend to carry parts of the culture in which we were raised with us. A seriously important part of that is invariably food and the objects used to prepare it.

Across a global city like London there are utensils, bowls, pans and dishes being used right now that previously would only have been available in very specific parts of the world. And in the global city more and more of us explore and enjoy the food traditions of other cultures.

When the archaeologists of the future dig up what remains of such a global city, they’re going to find implements representing cultures from all over the planet.

The previous owner of this object was given it by her mother in Bangladesh when she came to London to get married in the 1970s. By using it to prepare the family’s meals, its owner was ensuring a taste of the homeland – many thousands of miles away – could be had in her new home.

It’s an interesting thought that although we experiment with food from other cultures, what we eat and the way we prepare it are often the slowest things to change. So the basic objects used to pound and grind food have often changed very little over thousands of years.Ìę

The previous owner of this object was maintaining her contact with her cultural heritage, connecting with her past, even though she was geographically so very far removed from it.

This object is not just an object of our time, it’s an object of all time and it gets to the very essence of what it is to be human. We make things and we depend upon them. In some cases we take them with us wherever we go and they connect us to our past like little else can.

This object is both a part and evidence of humanity’s collective memory.

• Listen to Evan Davis discussing this final contender with curator JD Hill

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• Find out about the other contenders: a football shirt, a mobile phone, Antarctic clothing and a solar-powered lamp.

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What do you think? Add a comment

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A few weeks ago, we asked you what object you think best represents the times in which we live. And – thank you – you’ve been answering us. Looking through your choices so far I see that, a little overwhelmingly, you’ve gone for items on a technological theme.

Today’s object makes use of the very latest technology. It’s a solar panel.

Without a doubt one of the greatest challenges we face as a species is that not only are the resources we’ve come to rely on limited in supply, but our climate and environment is changing in large part because of the way we use them. As a harnesser of renewable energy, this object offers a possible solution.

True, but aren’t solar-panels kind of common? Old hat? One of my neighbours has some on their roof. What makes them so important – so of our time that we’re considering having one as the 100th object?

This particular solar panel is small, portable and has been made using the kind of technology only available to us now. Those photovoltaic cells (that’ll be the things that convert sunlight into electricity) depend on silicon cells – developed to make mobile phones and computers work. It’s also got a rechargeable battery, and is attached to a lamp. What’s more you can plug your mobile phone into it and charge that.

It could only have been made in our world, in our times.

But there’s another side to the story. In parts of the developing world there are millions without access to mains electricity. For them, an independent supply provided by the sun is a pretty revolutionary thing.

Eight hours of sunshine will give this lamp 100 hours of bright, white light. So, with this kit you can cook or study at night without needing to resort to using such dangerous – and not to mention expensive – fuels as kerosene that not only risks burning you or your property, but also gives off harmful fumes.

Being able to charge your mobile phone means you can have contact with the wider world. You can trade, you can transfer money and soon enough you’ll be able to access the Internet.

For many in remote villages this little collection of plastic things represents the freedom to live beyond the confines of your circumstances.

The earth receives more solar energy in one hour than the world population consumes in one year. As renewable power goes the sun is not just the reason why we’re all here, it could be the reason why we get to stay here

As long as the sun shines, this object provides. It’s a life-changer and not just for a few of us. It could alter and secure the existence of billions.

• Listen to Evan Davis discussing the solar-powered lamp with curator Ben Roberts

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• Find out about the other contenders: a football shirt, a mobile phone, Antarctic clothing and a pestle and mortar.

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What do you think? Add a comment

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This morning I got the 07.25 train into work. It left on time; it arrived on time. Not so unusual. But it got me thinking: accurate time-keeping is one of the fundamental aspects of the modern world – very little that we do would go half as well without it.

That’s why this week on A History of the World in 100 objects I’d like to focus on one object in particular: a nineteenth century marine chronometer.

This intricate combination of cogs, wheels, hands and numbers is perhaps one of the key inventions of the past 200 years. It allowed, for the first time, accurate time-keeping at sea. Sailors could now find their longitude by working out how far from the Greenwich-Meridian line in London they had travelled. This not only standardised time but was, quite literally, a life-saver.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries many of the countries of Europe and the USA were undergoing the transformation from agricultural to industrial economies (popularly known as the Industrial Revolution). This process could not have happened without accurate time-keeping, as lead curator JD Hill explains:

It’s about having established structure, having standardised time. People are turning up to work at a certain time and leaving work at a certain time – that’s the industrial revolution: Clocking on and off work.

Our chronometer though has another cog to its works. It kept time on board HMS Beagle as it carried a young Charles Darwin across the world gathering the knowledge and inspiration to develop the theory of evolution.

While time was changing the world around Darwin, he, for the first time, described how it changed the world before him. The nineteenth century brought a revolution in thought just as it did on the ground.

Mechanised and more efficient production would bring increased wealth to the powers of Europe. Our Sudanese slit drum sheds light on the expansion of colonial empire at this time and most critically the scramble for the resources and territory of Africa.

Expanding empire is also a key theme in another of our objects – a tea set. The story of tea-drinking is tied inextricably to British endeavours overseas at this time, but it also speaks very interestingly of a shift back at home where mass-production techniques would change the way we considered and consumed newly affordable objects just like these.

A simple British penny stamped with the slogan ‘Votes for women’, reveals the story of one of the many movements for social and political reform that was born out of this modern world:

What we are seeing is that along with mass-production came mass politics. One of the manifestations of this was in the extension of the franchise. In other words: enabling more citizens to vote. While initially this was done on the basis of owning large amounts of property, the movement to extend this, irrespective of gender, is a key factor in the nineteenth century.

Away from Europe, Japan was also successfully embracing modernisation and emerging as an imperial, industrial power in its own right. The instantly recognisable print by Hokusai, The Great Wave, offers a fascinating view of a country caught between its isolationist past and open future.

This week we’re hearing about the world on the brink of the twentieth century. This is the period when we invented and got used to the idea of mechanisation, of standardisation, of production and of organisation on a hitherto unimaginable scale.

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I’d like to start today by going back to the very first episodes of A History of the World in 100 objects in which Neil MacGregor described a two million year-old stone chopping tool and an almost two million year-old stone handaxe.

Those series stalwarts who’ve tuned in since the very beginning will know that objects such as these formed the revolutionary technology that enabled our earliest ancestors to live in the changing environments in which they found themselves. Even two million years ago it was already becoming apparent that the things we make would allow us to adapt, explore and thrive pretty much anywhere on our planet.

Fast-forward a little and the next object (or objects) on our list of contenders for the 100th spot in our tale finds us – for the first time in human history – exploring, living and working in the last place on earth to be colonised by us.

It’s a set of clothing designed to be worn in Antarctica.

Clothing? A coat and some furry boots? The 100th object? Really? Well, I’m assured that if you tried to go for a walk on or around the South Pole without this lot you’d likely be dead within, say, one hour.

As anyone tuning into Radio 4 this morning will have heard, British Museum curator Barrie Cook explained how these clothes make it possible for humans to live in a place we simply couldn’t have covered at any other stage in the story Neil MacGregor has been telling.

But there are more reasons why these articles of clothing are appropriate representatives of our times. They’re almost exclusively put together using man-made materials that could only be produced using the technology of the twenty-first century.

They were also constructed in different places around the world (Colombia, Canada, France, and
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We’re used to stories of Captain Cook, of Ernest Shackleton, whose daring deeds have grown into the stuff of legend, but these clothes represent the twenty-first century equivalent of what they – and our two million year-old ancestors – did. This is us reaching the frontier of our world and making things to help us live there. Indeed the only reason we can live there is because of the very human characteristic of making, using and depending on ‘things’.

But why would we want to live there?

Well, this is another part of the story. Antarctica is quite literally at the forefront of environmental and climate change. We need these clothes so we can study this place and come to understand the processes that will surely define humanity’s next chapter.

This object will help us write that.

• Listen to Evan Davis discussing the Antarctic clothing with curator Barrie Cook

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• Find out about the other contenders: a football shirt, a mobile phone, a solar-powered lamp and a pestle and mortar.

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What do you think? Add a comment

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It’s day two of our series within a series and if, like me, you’re an early bird you may have just caught British Museum curator Ben Roberts talking to Evan Davis on Radio 4 about the second on our list of contenders for the 100th object spot.

It’s something that will perhaps not surprise many. Some of you may even be using one to read this post. In fact a lot of you have already told us that it would be your 100th object.

It’s a mobile phone.

There are around five billion (yes, five billion) mobile phones in use in the world today. That’s astonishing. At age 31 I don’t consider myself all that old, but I remember a time before we had them. We’ve effectively gone from 0 to 5 billion in one generation.

And in so many ways these little devices have changed our lives as they have become – more and more – vital pieces of our everyday puzzle. So far has this process gone that mobiles are now intrinsic elements of global culture, almost dictating our lives from how we communicate and organise ourselves, to the language we use (text-ing anyone?).

But from the image you see here you’ll be able to spot that the phone we’ve chosen is not exactly the latest model. There’s no camera, and not an app in sight.

This phone is at least second-hand and was bought for the British Museum in a market in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. It's perhaps not a surprise it's a Nokia, as they are the largest single manufacturer of mobile phones in the world and this is one of the first models to be sold widely in Africa. The story it tells – and the principle reason why it’s on our list – is how mobiles are transforming the developing world.

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In many parts of the world access to telephones was until recently restricted by the availability of fixed telephone lines. In the developing world, a lack of infrastructure has meant no access to the ease of communication afforded by phones. Mobiles have meant people can have that without the need for land lines (as our evolving language would put it).

So now fishermen in Kerala, India, can use mobiles to check out where the best prices might be paid for their catch; farmers in Tanzania can sign-up to a text-messaging service that’ll keep them updated on the weather forecast, and small businesses across Africa can transfer their money through the air.

In the developing world mobile phones mean connectivity, communication and economic development on an unprecedented scale.ÌęÌę

Like yesterday’s football shirt this is not an object of beauty. It’s not a special object and no-one will be filled with awe at the sight of it in a museum display case. But it’s very ubiquity is part of what makes it so important and so relevant.

Just as the stone tools featured in the first week of this series were among the objects that defined early humans, this is one of the objects that defines and expresses who we are and how we live today.

• Listen to Evan Davis discussing the mobile phone with curator Ben Roberts

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• Find out about the other contenders: a football shirt, a Antarctic clothing, a solar-powered lamp and a pestle and mortar.

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As listeners to Radio 4, visitors to the British Museum and readers of this blog will not have been able to miss, we’ve chosen, but not yet revealed the star of the 100th chapter of our story.

Over the next week, we’ll be revealing five contenders for the final object that each tell of aspects of the world around us today – indeed the world that we’ve seen shaped through the previous 99 broadcasts.

If you tune into Radio 4’s Today programme each morning you’ll hear some of my colleagues – Ben, Barrie and JD – introducing the objects on-air. Here on the blog you’ll get to see them and I’ll do my best to tell you why these objects have been chosen and what they can tell us about the ingenuity and challenges shaping humanity in the twenty-first century.

Appropriately, therefore, we start with a football shirt.

Football – or association football to give it its proper title – may have evolved on the public school fields of nineteenth century Britain, but today it’s a global giant.

We live in a world more connected than at any other time in history and what else unites disparate, discrete and geographically remote parts of the world in the same way as football? Go anywhere and you could probably find someone who’ll discuss with you not just the game itself, but teams and people playing it on the other side of the world.

But this isn’t just any football shirt: it bears the name of , an African who grew up in France and whose skills have led to his global fame. Through television, radio, magazines, billboard posters, the Internet, Drogba’s face and tremendously gifted feet are known the world over. And Didier plays for , a team based in London and owned by a Russian.

The shirt was made by a German-owned company, in China, and bought in London. It’s covered in logos, names, motifs that are instantly recognisable. We know these as brands – another phenomenon of our age, protected by copyright but not exempt from being copied (underlined by the fact that the Museum has also acquired a companion object to this one, a probable fake bought in a market in Peru).

I can imagine the choice may surprise some – how could we include it in a list that features such one-off beauties as the double-headed serpent, the standard of Ur or Akan drum? Fairly mundane this shirt might be, but it tells a story every bit as potent and relevant as any great work of art.
We live in a world where we consume branded objects. The very fact that this is a mundane artefact demonstrates a distinctive new feature of our world of things: we see, own and use the same objects in many parts of the world. As JD puts it: ‘you could just as easily see people wearing this in London, Lisbon, Lima, Lagos
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This is a potentially throw-away item – and I don’t just say that as a West Ham fan – next year it’ll likely be replaced by a new model and Didier himself may well have moved on too. The brands, the personalities and indeed the objects we consume can and do change rapidly. We all own a lot of things and we can usually replace them with ease.

This shirt is a mass-produced symbol of our globalised world – it’s got 2010 in every millimetre of its man-made fibre.

• Listen to Evan Davis discussing Drogba's Chelsea shirt with curator JD Hill

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• Find out about the other contenders: a mobile phone, Antarctic clothing, a solar-powered lamp and a pestle and mortar.

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In 1759 a new kind of visitor attraction flung open its doors in London. It set out – as enshrined in its founding mission statement – to be a place for "all studious and curious persons".

The British Museum, as it’s still known, was a product of an extraordinary period in which European minds began to explore the world around them, not just physically but on a scientific and philosophical level too. This age is known as the Enlightenment and, as well as museums, it bequeathed us such ideas as archaeology, natural history, geology, and the scientific method as we know it.

This week on A History of the World we’ll hear about this period, but, as lead curator JD Hill explains, in typical style we’ll hear about it from some, perhaps, unexpected points of view.

This is the age of the Enlightenment in Europe: the age of rational, scientific enquiry of nature and humanity. But what we have chosen to do is look at the Enlightenment from a series of perspectives outside of Europe.

It would have been easy for us to fall into telling the well-known story of the Enlightenment from within Europe – especially at the British Museum, itself an Enlightenment institution – but we don’t want to do that!

By attempting to look in a different way, we can hope to understand how the age of rational enlightenment was also an age of exploitation of others; an age of exploration, and an age of colonial empire building.

Reason, liberty and progress may have been the watchwords of the day but, as we’ll hear through our objects this week, the Enlightenment project had a very mixed range of consequences.

The Akan drum is the oldest African-American object in the British Museum. It was probably made in what is now Ghana but found in Virginia, part of the new British colony in north America. There’s little doubt that it made the passage across the Atlantic on a ship engaged in the triangular trade that brought sugar and other products from the Americas to Britain, European products to Africa and African Slaves to the Americas. The Enlightenment was also the time when the Transatlantic slave trade was at its height.

A native-american made buckskin map tells another story of north America – one of colonial expansion, based on both trade and exploitation of the indigenous population.

Elsewhere, European sailors were venturing further into the Pacific, coming into contact with the inhabitants of the distant islands scattered across this vast ocean.

Two of our objects this week – the feather helmet and bark shield, from Hawaii and Australia respectively – are associated with the famous voyages of Captain James Cook, in many ways the poster boy of European Enlightenment exploration. His encounters with native populations would have profound and lasting consequences.

But this period wasn’t just about European endeavour. China, under the Qing dynasty, was growing in size and economic power, while making its own efforts to understand the world. Through a jade bi – a disc made from China’s most treasured material – we’ll hear about an empire considered by some to be the greatest the world had ever seen, but one of which many Western audiences may be less aware.

The Enlightenment period brought new ways of looking at the world as different ideas were explored and cultures came together – often for the first time – and, as a legacy of this age, it’s fitting that the British Museum, and the objects inside it, should provide a means through which we may continue to explore.

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The Gardeners' Question Time team are taking a quick look at some gardening objects today in the potting shed. We've already had a range of horticultural objects added to the site.

Here Bob Flowerdew takes a look at a few that have caught his eye - plus he gives us his thoughts on the gardening objects that the team have kindly added. So over to Bob:

The A History of the World site is full of fascinating, and more everyday objects.Ìę

One that caught my eye is the model of the indigo factory, which appeared in the 2008 Plants and People exhibition at Kew. A model unfortunately cannot convey the most impressive thing about these places: apparently, the stench from indigo manufacture was so great that many refused to approach, let alone visit places where the trade was carried on. The rotting smell of decay, as the plants were turned to dye, was said to be truly stomach churning.

The Yorkshire Museum of Farming’s hand-pushed seed drill looks hard work. Would not a hand-pulled drill have been easier? Incidentally, Jethro Tull’s seed drill was only part of his method, as it allowed a horse-drawn multiple hoe to be used for weeding. It was this that made him so successful - although when the French Academy came they took away only the drill and not the hoe; not perceiving that both were intrinsic to the tool’s functionality.

Within the Gardener’s Question Time section of this virtual museum, I love Bunny’s mud hut - though I’m not sure if it will pass muster for long, given our damp climate. Then again my ancient ancestors lived in similar ones.

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Chris Beardshaw nominated the lawnmower – and no history of gardening would be complete without it. It’s a device that allowed the common people to have their turf as neat as the great gardens without the need for skill with a scythe -Ìę if only they were still all such push models instead of the infernal, noisey, motorised ones today.

Stroud Museum’s entry claims to be the oldest lawnmower - but you know I reckon I’ve got one not quite as new, well at least not in quite as good condition.

Eric Robson also entered a lawnmower of sorts, an Allen Scythe, a kind of giant powered shaver on wheels, a dangerous device even if working properly, and which he reckons a prime example of inbuilt unreliability. I wish I had a photo of my old Vauxhall Viva, it was even more unreliable. Indeed I never got three consecutive uneventful trips out of it, then it was stolen – and,of course, broke down so the thieves had to abandon it.

Conversely, Peter Gibbs's seed dibber is about as reliable a tool as one can find- and one that people continually re-invent and believe unique. The dock lifter was somewhat rustic in manufacture, I have another as old and better made, and a modern one that is all space frame and looks like something from a space expedition. Ann Swithinbanks’ book about Kew is a good choice, as this is the pinnacle of horticultural gardens without which we would be much impoverished.

I rather thought Matthew Biggs's mattock showed a history of hard work - I hope he doesn’t have to do too much with it.

Obviously many objects get discarded and found in gardens such as the decorated clay pipe, the coldstream cap star, a silver penny and even a sundial - though I suppose that lived there anyway.

I’m not sure I should even countenance mentioning the first garden gnome from Lamport hall - not totally tasteless itself it sadly has been followed by too many and too much similar tat since.

One object I was envious of is the steam soil steriliser, I have real use for that, though I’d also really really like that Hove amber cup, gorgeous. And most bizarre of all the objects my trawl threw up: the Lloyds Bank turd from York.

No, not another vitriolic quip, quite justifiably, at the heads of bankers, but an actual turd, thought to be ancient Viking. Now I wonder what value would they give that on the Antiques Roadshow?

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