Thank you for downloading this episode of a history of the world in a hundred objects from BBC Radio 4. So far this week we've been in Damascus handling the first Islamic coinage and in

Suffolk with the great Anglo-Saxon burial ship at Sutton Hu. The famous helmet found there leaves

no doubt that it was the grave of a warrior chief. If pursuing this week's themes of war,

empires and faith, we spin the globe of the world around 650 AD on its axis,

and if we keep moving west to what is now Peru, we're going to find there another warrior

commemorated. Here in Peru, a forgotten people have left a history not just a face but an entire

three-dimensional portrait of their fallen warrior.

And from this small sculpture, from the clothes and the weapons that it shows,

from the way it was made and buried, we can begin to unravel the mystery of a lost civilization.

It couldn't possibly have had any contact with the societies then flourishing in Europe and Asia.

But astonishingly, it shows a great number of similarities with them.

What does that say about what it means to be human?

I suppose you could sort of compare them in our culture to Toby Jugs.

Do you sort of imagine people sitting round? compare them in our culture to Toby Jugs.

So you sort of imagine people sitting around

getting smashed really, and they each having

their own characteristic drinking vessel.

We had indeed a smoking gun and also the plethora of

secretial acts on the human remains themselves on the bones.

A history of the world in a hundred objects. Moche Potte Pot, shaped like a warrior, from Peru 100 to 700 AD.

History has been kind to 700 AD.

History has been kind to only some American cultures.

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