´óÏó´«Ã½

In a previous post I wrote about the serious task of selecting 100 future radio stars from the almost 8 million objects cared for by the British Museum.

Since our curators tackled that one, many hundreds of objects have been added to their original selection right here on this website - by museums and individuals all over the UK - each of them contributing a piece of global history to the project.

So, I thought I'd ask the brains behind A History of the World to pick some objects from the site that appeal to their expert minds. Over the next few weeks, I'll bring you some of their choices - starting today with , British Museum curator of the .

Ben brought you many of the fascinating stories in the first set of programmes, and you'll hear his handiwork in the next set - starting on 17 May - too.

First off he picked out 's Bronze Age boat found beneath the streets of the town in 1992.

It has always been assumed that people in Britain were sailing across the seas in prehistory. From around 6,000 years ago, when the last land that joined Britain to the continent disappeared, they had no option if they wanted to reach the island. As an archaeologist you see plenty of evidence for the trade in objects, technologies and ideas with continental Europe.

It is very rare indeed that you find a boat - let alone one around 3,500 years old that is so well preserved and so sophisticated in its manufacture as the Dover Boat. Made of oak planks, it is held together with wedges and yew withies - not a nail in sight! It is also beautifully displayed in the museum in Dover and in my opinion is one of the best Bronze Age displays in the country.

It's hard to imagine an ancient channel crossing being anything other than tricky, but this really shows that the people of Bronze Age Britain clearly knew a thing of two about engineering. Ben's next choice shows they had an eye for aesthetics too. He describes the Hove amber cup in :

This is one of the most stunningly beautiful prehistoric objects discovered in Britain. Made entirely from amber from the Baltic, it was carved to perfection over 3,500 years ago. It belongs to a range of cups made in exotic and precious materials such as gold, silver and amber in North West Europe.Ìý

And finally, a reminder of just how brave travellers of the past needed to be in the form of Francis Drake's Atlas of the world. Says Ben:

With the current hiatus in space travel, maybe we've forgotten the terrifying yet seductive idea of venturing across a virtually uncharted space and discovering new worlds. This map reminds us it was not so long ago that a European sailing across the Atlantic was heading towards an unknown world - a terra incognita. For all their knowledge and power, these explorers had no idea there were flourishing civilizations on the other side of the ocean.

In our age of guidebooks, mobile GPS and the Internet it's hard for us digital folk to imagine how daunting it must be to set off with little idea of what's beyond the horizon.
Ìý