Summary of Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Human life began in Africa. Our ancestors there created the first stone tools to chop meat, bones, and wood. It was this increasing dependency on the things we create that makes humans different from all other animals.

#2 The mummy of Hornedjitef, an Egyptian priest, is still yielding new information and sending us messages through time. The objects that were made for him demonstrate the ways in which this history will ask and occasionally answer different kinds of questions about objects.

#3 The inner coffin has a gilded face, which indicates divine status. It also has an image of the sun god as a winged scarab beetle, symbol of spontaneous life, flanked by baboons who worship the rising sun.

#4 Thanks to scientific advances, we can learn a lot more about Hornedjitef today than was possible in 1835. For example, we can see how old he was, what kind of food he ate, and how he died.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669396826

IRB Media

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Insights on Neil MacGregor's A History of the World in 100 Objects

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Human life began in Africa. Our ancestors there created the first stone tools to chop meat, bones, and wood. It was this increasing dependency on the things we create that makes humans different from all other animals.

#2

The mummy of Hornedjitef, an Egyptian priest, is still yielding new information and sending us messages through time. The objects that were made for him demonstrate the ways in which this history will ask and occasionally answer different kinds of questions about objects.

#3

The inner coffin has a gilded face, which indicates divine status. It also has an image of the sun god as a winged scarab beetle, symbol of spontaneous life, flanked by baboons who worship the rising sun.

#4

Thanks to scientific advances, we can learn a lot more about Hornedjitef today than was possible in 1835. For example, we can see how old he was, what kind of food he ate, and how he died.

#5

The mummies in the British Museum have yielded great insights into the life of Egypt. By analyzing the materials used in mummification, we can compare them with substances found in different parts of the eastern Mediterranean and begin to reconstruct the trading networks that supplied materials to Egypt.

#6

The Egyptian writer Ahdaf Soueif said that it was no bad thing for Egyptian antiquities to be scattered around the world. They reminded us of the history of colonialism, but they also reminded the world of our common heritage.

#7

The beginning of human time was not in the Garden of Eden in 4004 BC, but it was in Africa, at the Olduvai Gorge, in 1931, when a young archaeologist named Louis Leakey found the oldest known humanly made things.

#8

The early humans who used these tools were not hunters themselves, but they were brilliant opportunists. They waited until lions, leopards, or other beasts had killed their prey, and then they moved in with their tools and secured the meat.

#9

The human brain has evolved to become asymmetrical, with the left and right hemispheres specializing in different skills and tasks. We are unable to survive without the things we make, and it is making things that makes us human.

#10

The handaxe is the Swiss Army knife of the Stone Age, an essential piece of technology with multiple uses. It was used by our ancestors for more than a million years, and it accompanied them as they spread across Africa and then across the world.

#11

The handaxe was a tool that helped us control our environment and transform it. It gave us better food as well as the ability to skin animals for clothing and shelter. We could now talk to each other and imagine something that wasn’t physically in front of us.

#12

The human brain changed about 50,000 years ago, and humans started to make patterns and representations of the animals that shared their world. They were making art.

#13

The artist carved the reindeer’s genitals under its belly, and we can be certain that the animal is in the autumn, at the time of rutting and the migration to winter pastures.

#14

The artwork found in the cave at Montastruc is a combination of naturalistic and abstract styles. It was made by humans who were still living off of hunting and gathering, but who were beginning to interpret their world through art.

#15

The art of the period was trying to enter fully into the flow of life, which was a very religious impulse. It was a desire to get inside and almost to be at home in the world at a deeper level.

#16

The first Americans were the people who made the spearheads found in Clovis points. They were able to establish small communities right across North America as the latest Ice Age was coming to an end.

#17

The first Americans were humans who arrived in Alaska from north-east Asia less than 15,000 years ago. They populated just about all of North America, and their descendants reached the southernmost tip of South America around 12,000 years ago.

#18

We have reached a key moment in human history. We have settled the entire habitable world, and we are hard-wired to keep moving. We are not settled, and we are still looking for somewhere else where something is better.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The development of farming occurred in at