A History of the World in 100 Objects: Indus Seal

The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, retells the history of human development from the first stone axe to the credit card, using 100 selected objects from the Museum. The ancient city of Harappa lies around 150 miles north of Lahore in Pakistan. It was once one of the great centres of a civilisation that has largely disappeared, one with vast trade connections and boasting several of the world's first cities, and it developed at a time when another great civilisation was being forged along the banks of the river Nile in Egypt. Neil investigates this much less well-known civilisation on the banks of the Indus Valley. He introduces a series of little stone stamps that are 4,500 years old, covered in carved images of animals and probably used in trade. The civilisation built over 100 cities, some with sophisticated sanitation systems, big scale architecture and even designed around a modern grid layout.