National Museums Scotland

A History of the World - A BBC and British Museum Partnership

National Museums Scotland has joined forces with the BBC and the British Museum to take part in a landmark project focusing on world history.

The A History of the World website allows visitors to explore artefacts and objects from Museums across the country that have helped shape history.

Listen in

The site also presents opportunities to listen, download and take part in the Radio 4 series "A History of the World In 100 Objects", broadcast from 18 January 2010. Written and directed by the British Museum director Neil MacGregor, the series narrates a history of the world from two million years ago to the present day, through objects from the British Museum's world collection.

Discover National Museums Scotland's contribution

As well as these 100 objects, hundreds more have been contributed from over 350 museum venues across the UK, including almost 60 objects from across Scotland, all telling a history of the world from their local perspective.

National Museums Scotland has contributed six key objects to the digital museum:

  • a silver travelling canteen belonging to Bonnie Prince Charlie, which was lost at the Battle of Culloden in April 1746. The canteen is on display in the Scotland Transformed gallery in the National Museum of Scotland.
  • the Darien chest, which was used to store money and documents associated with the Company of Scotland, a trading company set up in 1695 and now remembered for its disastrous venture to colonise Darien in Panama in 1698. You can see the chest in the Kingdom of the Scots gallery at the National Museum of Scotland
  • Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell, currently on display in the Connect gallery at the National Museum of Scotland.
  • the Querneh burial, the only intact Ancient Egyptian royal burial anywhere outside Egypt, which you can see in the Treasured exhibition in the National Museum of Scotland.
  • the Scottish democracy tent, a home-made ‘mini vigil’ travelling stall, used by members of the Democracy for Scotland campaign to take their message to towns and cities throughout Scotland and to get signatures for the petition asking for a Scottish Parliament. See the tent in the Scotland: A Changing Nation gallery in the National Museum of Scotland.
  • Concorde, the world's only supersonic passenger airplane, currently on display at the National Museum of Flight.

Get involved

Listeners and viewers will be encouraged to contribute to this online museum by uploading pictures of objects they own and explaining how these objects can help tell a history of the world. Visit the History of the World website to find out how you can get involved.