our book conversation. JEFFREY BROWN: A two-million-year-old stone chopping tool from Tanzania, a double-headed

serpent from around the 16th century in Mexico, a credit card issued in the United Arab Emirates

in 2009 -- just three of the objects that, according to a new book, help us understand

our past and who we are today. The book is "A History of the World in 100 Objects," all

of which are taken from the British Museum, which has been collecting objects for more

than 250 years. The author is Neil MacGregor, director of the museum. And he joins me now.

And welcome to you. NEIL MACGREGOR, "A History of the World in 100 Objects": Thank you very

much. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, we go to museums like yours, right, and we look at things,

stuff. But the contention here that you can pick a hundred of these things and somehow

draw a history of the world? NEIL MACGREGOR: Yes, quite a brave contention. What we were

trying to do was argue that, actually, when you go to a museum, the big thing to do is

really focus on a single object, choose one and get into it. And if you take one object

and go into it in-depth, then you learn a lot about the people that made it, why they

made it, the world it was for, and what it is to be a person needing objects and making

objects. You learn a lot about us almost in the object. JEFFREY BROWN: And in this case,

you put a bunch of objects, 100 objects, together. NEIL MACGREGOR: Yes. We chose 100 that go

from the very beginning of human history, of making things. So the first things we make

are about two million years ago. And we start there. And we wanted to keep going round the

world at different moments in history, up until today, sort of see what have we made

and why have we made it? That's the interesting thing, why we made these things anywhere in

the world and what do they tell us about us? JEFFREY BROWN: Well, tell me about that first

one, that earliest one, right? NEIL MACGREGOR: This is just about the oldest thing that anybody

like us made, made about nearly two million years ago in Tanzania in East Africa. And

it looks just like a (INAUDIBLE) but then at the top ridge there has been chipped away

very carefully to give a sharp edge. And these are the tools. This is the Swiss army knife

of the Stone Age. (LAUGHTER) NEIL MACGREGOR: And it's this kind of tool that lets us all

leave Africa and live everywhere, because this lets you strip the meat off the animals

to get more protein, break the bones to get the marrow. Then you can use it to take the

branches off the trees, skin the hides. This is what lets us... JEFFREY BROWN: Become us.

NEIL MACGREGOR: Become us. JEFFREY BROWN: As you say in the beginning, it allows people

to eat better, to grow better, to develop a better brain, everything, right? NEIL MACGREGOR:

Everything. Everything comes from that. And we, having made this thing, we now depend

on it. And for most of human history, this is the most important technology. This is

the technological discovery of humanity. JEFFREY BROWN: All right, now, you describe that one

as a first one. But how do you pick the objects? I mean, there have been -- was it fun? Were

there a lot of arguments about... NEIL MACGREGOR: There were huge arguments. JEFFREY BROWN:

Yes. NEIL MACGREGOR: It was the greatest fun ever, because the idea was we would spin the

world and say what's going on around in 2,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago? JEFFREY BROWN:

Spin the world and take walks through your own museum. NEIL MACGREGOR: Walks through

the museum and walks through time. And what is going in China, what is going on in Mexico,

in Egypt? And the thing then lets you go on this walk into another world. They open the

poetry of another existence that we can only know the things, because obviously nobody

wrote what they were doing with this. So we have got to take the things, imagine it and

recover it. JEFFREY BROWN: One interesting aspect that comes through as I have looked

through here, you often cite the impact of an object in its own era, but then through

time, in different eras. A famous example, of course, is the Rosetta stone, one of your

most famous objects. It had its own time, but then through Napoleonic era and up to

our own. NEIL MACGREGOR: That's the great joy of objects, that they're made for one

purpose and then over time they do something completely unexpected. The Rosetta stone is

actually a tax break between the king and the church. The Greek king says that he will

give the priests a tax break if they pray for him. Fine. And this is announced on the

stone tablet, and dozens of copies all through Egypt. And that all ends, all breaks down,

ruins, whatever. And in the 17 -- late 1790s, when the French have invaded Egypt, they start

digging up to fortify themselves at Rosetta. They come across the stone. And then the British

arrive to stop the French taking Egypt. (LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: So we get into a different

sort of history, right of European power and colonialism, right? NEIL MACGREGOR: The beginning

of European colonialism in Egypt. And then this object, which has the Greek and the Egyptian

on it, is studied by the whole of Europe. And it's that object that now tells us how

we can read ancient Egypt. But nobody making the stone ever thought, to start with, that

they were going to provide the code for hieroglyphics, never crossed their mind. And that is what

is wonderful about objects. They mean different things as time goes on. JEFFREY BROWN: Of

course, another interesting aspect of this is many things simply don't survive, right?

So we don't know about some of the missing pieces of history. NEIL MACGREGOR: No. That

s the -- and obviously, we only have bits and pieces of the story. And the main things

that don't survive, of course, are textiles or things made of wood in wet climates. JEFFREY

BROWN: Right. I notice when you get to a piece of clothing, you say something about it. We're

halfway through, we're about a million years into human history. This is the first piece

of cloth. NEIL MACGREGOR: That survives. JEFFREY BROWN: Yes. Yes. NEIL MACGREGOR: Paper doesn't

survive very often. So it's very patchy. But that's another part of the game, because it

means you have to imagine what didn't survive and remember what didn't survive. JEFFREY

BROWN: What about -- I want to go to the last object of the book. NEIL MACGREGOR: Yes. JEFFREY

BROWN: It's a solar-powered lamp. Now, you write here that it was hard to decide what

should be the last thing, right? Because now you're up to our own era. NEIL MACGREGOR:

We wanted to choose an object that would tell us about the world today and this extraordinary

global world we live in, where we're all in constant contact with each other. We thought

we would go back to the beginning of the story, the way somebody in East Africa was using

an object to change their life. And this is now changing the life of millions of people

in the tropics. It's a solar panel which powers both a lamp and a mobile phone recharger.

And with this lamp, anybody working in a hut, living in a hut, away from main electricity,

for the first time has light at night. This means they can read, they can study. It also

means they don't need to have kerosene lamps. So it's better for health. With the mobile

phone charger, they can sell their produce better in the local markets. This is evening

up the great divide between the city and the country among the poorest people on the planet.

And the technology is of course American. The microtechnology was invented in the U.S.

It's fabricated in China and sold in Africa. And it's another tool that's going to let

us change the world. JEFFREY BROWN: So the story continues. NEIL MACGREGOR: The story

continues. JEFFREY BROWN: Let me ask you, finally, this was -- this book was based on,

I gather it was an enormously popular BBC radio program, right? Now, the book was a

bestseller in Britain. Now it's out here. What do you think it is that grabs people

so much about looking at things like this? NEIL MACGREGOR: I think that the point is

that a single object lets you explore a world that you want to know about. We all want to

know a bit about what it is like to see the world from Sudan or from Korea or from Mexico.

And it's difficult to read long books on that. A thing lets you journey immediately into

another world. And it's a thing made by somebody like you with hands like yours, a mind like

yours. And you're on a journey of poetic imagination to a place that you could never reach otherwise.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. We're going to continue this conversation online. We will go through

the entire history of the world, but for now... (LAUGHTER) JEFFREY BROWN: ... Neil MacGregor

is the director of the British Museum. And his new book is "A History of the World in

100 Objects." Thanks so much. NEIL MACGREGOR: Thank you. urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags

place urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags country-region urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags

PlaceName urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags PlaceType RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight, a history

of humanity told 100 ways Normal Microsoft Office Word RAY SUAREZ: Finally tonight, a

history of humanity told 100 ways Title Microsoft Office Word Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8