Object 6: Bird-shaped pestle (made 4 - 8,000 years ago). Stone, found in Papua New Guinea

A startle of colour stabs through the canopy of the forest below,

A flurry of wingbeats, marvelling the air

As the bright iridescent bird; a sudden shock of feathers and flight

Sets sail above them.

They abandon their digging for a while, kneel and crane their heads upwards

And watch as the bird departs,

Blessing the crop of bitter tubers beneath their feet.

It’s time for farmer families to gather food, to harvest wheat and rice and root,

It’s time to sit around a fire, to kneel before a stone,

It’s time to grind the kernels of the gathered grain, to store them up before the rain,

It’s time to cook, to boil and bake, to share a meal, to give and take,

It’s time to learn how wild things grow, to know their seasons;

When to reap and when to sow.

On upland soil where no trees grow,

Wild grasses wave in the ripple of the wind;

There in bleak summers when rain was scarce and deer and bison refused to show,

When hunger gnawed at vein and bone, and children moaned and cried to feed;

A green verdant blanket of barley, wheat and rye stood ready with their seed.

And in the heat of a jungle, humid with the breath of the earth,

Pestle and mortar are pounding away, the women rock, the women sway

To the rhythm of their daily task:

The bowl of hip, the bowl of stone are scraped and scoured,

The taro pummelled to a paste,

The fire is lit, the bread is baked;

The village family rooted firmly in their village soil

Share the rich baked alchemy of their toil.

And the memory of the bird with wings outstretched,

Blessing the harvest as it ascends with a message

Into the wonder of the bright blue sky,

Is now a memory in a shaft of stone;

A celebration in a practical object,

A magical omen hatched in a human brain.

And with sturdy phallic sureness, its pounding message of plenty,

Its message of rain and fruitful harvests,

Its message of fertile hopefulness

Is transforming Earth’s green gift into food.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/xQBDvzBRSrqVQYQ5ECaZwA

Object 5: Clovis point (made over 13,000 years ago). Stone spearhead found in Arizona

Leaf of stone,

Lethal stone,

Pointed stone,

Slender stone,

Sharp stone,

Stone that can kill...

Spearhead stone.

Hunters are hunting,

Surrounding their prey -

It doesn't stand a chance:

The painful roar of fear scarring the sky

As they hurl death at a bison, a bear or a bellowing mammoth,

Staggering, bewildered to its knees;

A collapsing hulk of muscle and visceral slaughter,

Maiming the air with its plaintive cry;

The last of its kind, weary of the chase,

Weary of the primitive struggle to survive

As a hail of spears pierce its flesh,

The last of a line, weary of being hunted... by men.

People have been on the move,

Walking across plains, walking across mountains, walking across continents.

People have been exploring, searching, finding new lands,

Discovering new places to live and thrive:

There are tribes of people out there in the world now,

Treading the soil of a bright green planet, verdant and fruitful,

Tribes of people trudging their weary journeys,

Curious to explore the limits of their imagination,

Forever crossing new horizons, stepping into new landscapes,

Leaving their footprint behind as they march forward,

Leaving the mark of mankind wherever they go.

Now man has the upper hand, and will have forever more,

Now man has the edge, and need not fear the claw and tooth,

The random savage death, the wild instinctive kill

That tears like a rush of fateful wind through the long savannah grass,

That falls like heavy rain from the twisted canopy of jungle trees;

An animal struggle of muscle and jaw, biting terror into the brain...

Now man decides what may live or die,

Man is master of his destiny:

A human master with a spear in his hand.

  

While the planet was thawing, the tribes had been hunting.

While ice had been melting, the families of men had been walking,

Walking across a bridge of ice into a continent empty of people,

A lonely Eden of newness, brimming with promise,

And every step they took was a discovery,

Every mountain scaled revealed another horizon of possibility,

Every river forded brought them nearer to the heart of a new beginning:

A planet of plenty was shrinking

A planet of ice was becoming a planet of water,

A planet of life was becoming a planet ordered by life...

The life of a hunter, trapped like a fly in amber on an empty continent

As his bridges fade behind him like dreams,

Like dreams dissolving in the salty waters of a careless ocean.

And the bewildered immigrants forget where they came from,

They forget the family they left behind,

And begin to wonder how they came to be here,

Wonder if they fell from the sky like a meteor,

A fiery spark of creation forged in a star,

Forking down from the Heavens to seed the earth?

Wonder if they came from the earth itself,

Burrowing upwards through the mother's womb to the light,

Clawing their way to creation through her soil and loam,

To stand upright upon the very clay that moulded their flesh?

And maybe they even arrived on the back of a great water beetle,

It's iridescent wings beating life into existence:

A melding of air and water, making matter of man.

And the broken shaft of a spear lies abandoned on the ground,

Trodden underfoot by a dying mastodon,

A leaf of stone buried in time,

Waiting for someone to find it so that the story can finally be told

Of how a race of people walked across a bridge of ice

And forgot that it was ever there,

Of how a tribe of hunters made America their home,

And surrounded by a sanctuary of seas,

Knew nothing of another world where other hunters were busy building ships.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/hLAME-wiTyaZU2KQf-P5vA