Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects
from BBC Radio 4.
For most of history, to live in Britain was to live at the edge of the world.
This week, I've been in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Pakistan, and India,
seeing how 5,000 years ago, city states grew up along some of the great rivers of the world.
We've explored their styles of leadership and their architecture, their writing,
and the international trading networks that let them acquire new skills and materials.
But in the world beyond these great river valleys, the story was different.
From China to Britain, people continued to live in relatively small farming communities,
with none of the problems or opportunities of the new, large urban centers.
What they did share with them was a taste for the expensive and the exotic.
And thanks to well-established trade routes, even in Britain,
on the outer edge of the Asian-European landmass, they had long been able to get what they wanted.
I think it's an extraordinarily beautiful object.
Almost anybody presented with one of these things would just stop in their tracks.
They're stunning.
We're in Canterbury in this program, around 4,000 BC,
where the supreme object of desire is a polished jade axe.
A History of the World in 100 Objects.
Jade axe, approximately 6,000 years old, discovered near Canterbury.