History of the World in 1000 Objects opens up with a simple stone handax for cutting and digging made around 1.65-million years ago and ends, 999 artifacts later, with satellites and smart phones.
Using human-made objects to explain world history is such a fun and interesting way to see how societies around the planet have evolved both culturally and technologically throughout the millennia. These life-changing inventions include jewelry, clothing, dishware, religious weapons, art, statues, ships, globes, musical instruments, engines, bikes, telephones, and so much more from every time period since the beginning of humanity (as far as we can tell).
It's fascinating to connect the dots, figuring out how one invention lead to another from culture to culture and era to era. As with most DK books, interesting bits of info accompany each photographed object, and each section has an introduction giving us some historical background on what we are about to see. And as if 1,000 photos in chronological order of when they were made weren't enough to give us a sense of our world's progression, the back of the book has a 76-page timeline of world history (see example above) which could be a book all on its own.
See sample pages from this book at Wink.
