Object 2: Olduvai stone chopping tool (made 1.8 million years ago) found in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, East Africa

Dead meat
Rank
On the vast Savannah.
Leopard's leftovers,
Spilt gore:
Food for a forager,
Food for the brain,
White ribs of marrow wilting in the bright African sun
Two million years ago.

Stone on the ground,
Stone in the hand,
Stone in the brain of Savannah man;
Curious eyes examining a fist of stone,
Turning it around,
Feeling its weight,
Seeing the possibilities within...

And then the slap of stone on stone:
Two hands, two stones, two eyes
Click an echo of labour at the cliffs of the great Olduvai Gorge...
Two million years ago.

And death is always in the air,
Death is always an instant away:
Hunger gnawing at bones,
The snarl in the long grass, the deep throaty grunt in the dead of night,
Claws flexing in anticipation of a kill.

But the stone is growing an edge as his eyes narrow -
Four strikes, five, turn it around - another chip sharpens a line,
It will do the job, but a spark of thought chips another possibility -
Seven, eight strikes and there in his hand is a tool.

While the leopard and lion sleep in the heat of the day,
Savannah man is kneeling over the torn carcase of their abandoned meal.
Stone cuts flesh from bones; stone severs sinews and butchers meat,
Stone shatters a bloody femur and reveals the nourishing marrow within -
Greedy mouths suck at the sticky substance of life:
Lick the liquid brain food that their tool has revealed,
Devours the rich protein that feeds the mind,
That gives them the imagination to see beyond instinct,
That grows the thought in the rich loam of the cerebellum,
To make tools to give them the edge
In the deep scar of earth one thousand miles long,
Baking in the blaze of an African sun
Two million years ago.

And we are all Africans,
Bonded in the struggle to live,
Bred in the fierce ritual of survival,
Savannah people with the marrow of invention rich in our bones:
Our ancestral DNA, a bequest from someone with a stone in his hand,
Beginning a journey that would lead us... where?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/ykHw5-oqQEGFnvat1gavxA

Object 1: Mummy of Hornedjitef (third century BC). A wooden coffin from Thebes, Egypt

I want to tell you a story about a museum,

And of  how ghosts speak to the living,

And how, like a dying star they sometimes leave a message behind:

"We were here, we were here," they say -

"Look at the objects we crafted, the tools we used,

Our art, our culture, our language

Speaking to you through the things that made us human."

And the remnants of lives once lived are here in the museum,

A message from the past, from our ancestors... our family;

They are here so that we don't forget where we came from,

They are here to remind us that we are all walking the same uncertain path

Through history,

Together.

And in this museum there is a corpse of a priest,

The shell of a man, who once lived and walked upon the earth,

But now lies wrapped tightly in bandages,

Embalmed and blessed by the priests who were to follow him later:

His name was Hornedjitef,

For it is written on his sarcophagus, so that the gods would know him,

And welcome his soul to the eternal afterlife in the kingdom of the dead.

But the journey there was complex and full of danger,

So before he died Hornedjitef said:

"I. Hornedjitef am an important priest,

Therefore I will commission spells and amulets to make my journey sure,

And a star map to navigate the temple of the sky,

So that I can weave a path through the delicate weft of constellations;

Because Heaven is a long, long way from here and a soul might get lost on the way,

Even one as important as mine."

And so upon his spaceship sarcophagus, in meticulous detail,

His brother priests marked down the blueprint of the universe,

The firmament and all its mysteries, spelt out confidently in hieroglyphs,

To guide him safely to Ra and Nut, the great sky goddess,

Who were waiting, patiently

To welcome their worthy priest to his rightful place within their pantheon.

But in spite of his map and his amulets and spells,

And inscriptions from the holy book of the dead to guide him on his way,

Hornedjitef's mortal remains are now interred in Bloomsbury:

His golden mask gazes out of a glass case at the curious visitors,

Telling the story of how a man who planned to fly through space,

Somehow ended his journey in a museum.

And through the celestial void of time, a dying star pulses its signal to us:

A haunting magnetic voice -

The voice of a star that is no longer there:

A ghost in space saying, "I was here, I was here!"

But like a priest from ancient Egypt,

The star as big and impressive as it was, has long since passed away,

No map or chart will take us there, or reveal its presence in all its glittering glory -

The heavenly pantheon it seems is a mortal as a man:

As mortal as a man who was once a mighty priest,

Who tried to steer his way through a universe of stars,

So that he could live forever.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/sogITE3FSKStlk12qd2W3w

Introduction to the poems.

I've been listening to the brilliant BBC Radio 4 series, A History Of The World In 100 Objects, where Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum has chosen a different object from the museum's collection for each programme to tell the story of the history of humanity. It has inspired me to try and write a poem for each of those objects; not just about each specific object, but also based on the broadcast itself, taking into account the research, ideas and points of view by both Mr Macgregor and the various contributors involved. I hope you enjoy the results...

For more information about Alex Jones: http://www.alex-jones.org/