An Ancient Greek coin to a defaced penny: The groundbreaking audio series that explored world history through objects

In 2010, a BBC radio show was launched called A History of the World in 100 Objects, which recounted two million years of humankind through artefacts. It was a huge hit – and has now inspired a new podcast that explores 250 years of US history in the same way.

What do a clay pot made in Japan 7,000 years ago, a 15th-Century brass statue of a royal figure from Nigeria, and a British coin defaced by a suffragette all have in common? They were among the "objects" selected for the seminal radio programme A History of the World in 100 Objects.

At 09:45 on January 18, 2010, the first episode of this ambitious series began on BBC Radio 4, presented by Neil MacGregor, an art historian who was then director of the British Museum. It began as an audio show, later leading to a worldwide touring exhibition, and it explored two million years of human history through items in the museum’s collection.

The show was a huge success, garnering critical acclaim and regularly winning audiences of up to four million. The novelist and critic Philip Hensher described it as "perfect radio". Historian Dominic Sandbrook said it was "joyously highbrow". Museums and heritage sites all over the country mounted linked events. A related book was a bestseller. So what was it about this radio show that made it so successful?

The idea was that MacGregor and various experts would pick 100 objects from the collection of the museum ranging in date from the beginning of human history, some two million years ago, up to the present. They had to come from all over the world, comprise all sorts of items, from humble, everyday tools to unique and priceless works of art, and be able to tell the story – or a story – of humankind. Each episode would focus on a single object.

"History used to mean written history," says MacGregor. "That limits you immediately to that small bit of humanity in history that wrote and it also limits you normally to the people that were in control. The main purpose of doing a history through objects was that we wanted to allow people who don't have a voice to be heard. Part of our project was to have a history told by the people who had never been able to tell their story through the things that they made. That, I think, is really important. How do you give a voice to the voiceless of the past?" 

The introductory episode explained what the show was all about. The first episode proper was about one of the oldest surviving objects made by humans, a chopping tool from the Olduvai Gorge in Northern Tanzania which is about 1.8 to two million years old. It would have........

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