If you wanted to select a set of objects which illustrate how
history has shaped us, or perhaps vice versa, what would you choose? What
objects, culled from throughout the course of time, define us as humans? What
object from the distant past would you place first on the list? What object
would you place last, to represent the very present?
The British Museum took on the task, as reported in last
Sunday’s New York Times, to “distill the history of the world” and
produced a list of 100 objects.
The oldest object of the 100: a stone chopping tool found in
Tanzania, considered “the beginning of the tool box”. A bird-shaped pestle,
found in New Guinea around 6000-2000 B.C. evoked the comment: “The history of
our most modern cereals and vegetables begins around 10,000 years ago…It was a
time of newly domesticated animals, powerful gods, dangerous weather, good sex
and even better food.” The Rosetta Stone appears on the list, as you might
expect, with the comment that “This dreary bit of broken granite has played a
starring role in three fascinating and different stories:” … Greek kings …
French and British imperial competition across the Middle East … and the
“scholarly contest that led to the most famous decipherment in history – the
cracking of hieroglyphics.”
What do you think that the 100 or so curators of the British
Museum, who spent 4 years on this project, selected as the ultimate object?
Think about it; I’ll mention it in a moment.
My favorite (based on the Times article; I still want
to read the book) is the credit card. Perhaps nothing epitomizes modern day interconnectedness
and globalization better than the curators’ selection of a Visa credit card
issued by HSBC. “This particular gold card is issued by the London-based bank
called HSBC, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. It functions
through the backing of the United States-based credit association, Visa, and
has on it writing in Arabic – it is in short connected to the whole world, part
of a global financial system, backed by a complex electronic superstructure
that many of us barely think about.”
That says a lot about why we must address local and
regional issues within the context of our worldwide social and economic
interdependencies.
I liked the comment about a two-inch-square ivory label once
attached to the sandals of the Egyptian pharaoh, King Den. “The nearest modern
equivalent I can think of to this label is the ID card that people working in
an office now have to wear round their necks to get past the security checks.”
The Head of Ife, from Nigeria A.D. 1400-1500 is striking. “It is one of a group
of 13 heads, superbly cast in brass, all discovered in 1938 in the grounds of a
royal palace in Ife, Nigeria, which astonished the world with their beauty.
They were immediately recognized as supreme documents of a culture that had
left no written record, and they embody the history of an African kingdom that
was one of the most advanced and urbanized of its day.” A North American Otter
Pipe (Ohio, 200 B.C.-A.D. 100) juxtaposed modern values with the earlier
development of civilization: “Although smoking is now largely seen as a fatal
vice, 2000 years ago in North America pipe smoking was a fundamental ceremonial
and religious part of human life. Different groups of Native Americans lived
across the continent, in ways much more varied than Hollywood westerns would
suggest. Those Americans living in middle America – the lands around the mighty
Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, from the gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes – were
farmers.”
So, what appears last on the list, to reflect 2010?
As the Times reported: “a plastic, solar-powered light about
the size of a coffee mug that came with a charger and cost $45. It can
illuminate an entire room, enough to change the lives of a family with no
electricity. ‘It is a transformative object, one that sets people free,’ Mr.
MacGregor said. ‘Once they have access to solar power, they have access to the
Internet, then they have access to the world of knowledge.’”
Very true, with profound implications.
So, take a look at the article in the Times, if you
can. Read the book. Then, think:
What would you select?
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