Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in a Hundred 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

citizens 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 centres. What they did show with them was a taste for

the expensive and the exotic.

And thanks to well-established trade routes, even in Britain on the outside edge of the Asian

European landmass, they had long been able to get what they wanted.

I think is 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 programme, around 4,000 BC,

where the supreme object of desire is a polished jade axe. A history of the world in a hundred

objects. Jade Axe.

Jade Axe, approximately 6,000 years old, discovered near Canterbury. At first sight, our axe looks like thousands of others in the British Museum collection, but it's thinner and it's wider than most

of them. I'm holding it now very carefully because it still looks absolutely brand new and very sharp. It's the shape of an oversized teardrop, about

seven inches long and at the base about two or three inches wide. It's cool to the touch and extraordinarily

pleasingly smooth. Axes occupy a special place in the human story. The farming revolution in the near east

took generations to spread across the breadth of mainland Europe, but eventually

...