Finding significance in the mundane – Review of A History of the World in 100 Objects

It wasn’t very long ago (1963 to be exact) that the widely overrated historian: High Trevor-Roper, then a professor of history at Oxford University said “Perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of Europe in Africa. The rest is largely darkness”. While many mainstream historians now correctly view this statement as being particularly narrow-minded, the key approach to historical analysis that informed the worldview of this condescending man has proven particularly hard to shake. Many people have a reflexive instinct to largely view history as written history, with most of history scholarship and teaching still being focused on the evaluation of written texts handed down by ancient societies and contemporary observers or visitors to such societies.

This emphasis is a really unfortunate one, not only because it largely confines the history of societies without a tradition of writing to the dustbins of history and leaves their achievements unsung. Further complicating this already sad picture is that what little information we have of these societies tend to come from the writings of other people they came in contact with. These interactions were often in circumstances that were less than amiable (i.e., enemies, competitors etc.) and the guys who did the writing often made sure to leave behind descriptions that were decidedly designed not to flatter their subjects. For example, much of the world’s knowledge of the Aztec civilization came from the writings of the Conquistadors that ended their subject’s civilization by - shall we say - taking a few items they were not entitled to while dispensing with the lives of those who posed any obstacle to their theft. Similarly, our knowledge of the life and activities of the Germanic tribes (out of present day Scandinavia) come largely from the writings of the Romans which they ended up defeating, a rare case of the vanquished getting to write the story. The list of biased reporting goes on: European settlers wrote about Native Americans, English visitors wrote fantastical tales about indigenous communities in West Africa etc.

This is why I really liked the approach of Neil MacGregor (Director of the British Museum) in writing this really great book. His great idea was to select 100 objects from all across the world through which he charts the progress of mankind from the Stone Age to the current day. He examines each object and explains the significance it held in the societies (and ages) in which it was created and used. These objects range from the two million year old Olduvai stone chopping tool to the modern-day credit card. The origins of these objects range from the Ife Bronze Heads (created in the 17^th century in what is now Nigeria) to an Egyptian sandal label from 4000 BC to the Seated Buddha of Gandhara (created in the 2^nd century AD in modern-day Pakistan) as well as a chronometer from the HMS Beagle (an early Victorian-Era naval vessel).

Despite the great diversity in the geographic origins and purposes of these various objects, they largely have one thing in common: they are largely mundane and pretty unremarkable in nature. There are very few grand and popular objects on the list: the Mona Lisa and other great works commissioned by the Medici are not held up to represent the renaissance era, rather we have mundane everyday items such as a note written in calligraphy and a miniature mechanical galleon that demonstrates the technical skill of 16^th century Germany and their seafaring ways. Representing the 2^nd part of the 20^th century is not a grand or sophisticated item like the Space Shuttle or the Mars Rover. Rather Mr. MacGregor’s choice is the humble credit card, a distinctly unremarkable rectangular piece of plastic lodged in billions of wallets the world over. The choice struck me as odd, but on further reflection I realized that a thousand years from now when our current civilization has been confined to the footnotes of history and an enterprising academic decides to write a thesis on how humans lived in the second half of the 20^th century, the credit card will be as good a window into understanding our lives as any other item I can think of. Encapsulated in that small, flat piece of plastic are themes such as: the emergence of the credit society and the attendant effects that personal debt brings; the rise of the “consumer society” that has led to there being 46 square feet of retail space per person in the US as well as the ubiquitous electronic networks that make all these incessant “swipings” workable.

I’ve always regarded Archaeology as a really cool discipline (hey, what other grown up occupation allows one to go around playing scavenger hunt games!). However, the end results of archaeology have too often been regarded as novelties that end up being gawked at in Museums and rich collectors’ living rooms. The close connection between history and archaeology is often not as closely linked as it should be, with very few books explicitly attempting to tell the history of everyday people in past eras through the simple objects they created and used in the normal course of their lives. This book did a great job giving voice to the voiceless as well as ink and parchment to the lives of often forgotten people who left little or no written text for succeeding generations to follow.