Ceremonial ballgame belt

Ceremonial ballgame belt

Neil MacGregor's history of humanity as told through one hundred objects that time has left behind. This week he is looking at objects of leisure and pleasure around the world about 2000 years ago. How were we amusing ourselves back then? Today's object is a large stone belt, a heavyweight ceremonial version of the leather and fibre padding that was used in an ancient ball game in central America. This was a game with a rubber ball that dates back as far as three and a half thousand years ago - the world's oldest known organised sport. Neil offers up the rules of the game and describes how it connected players to the realm of their gods. The historian Michael Whittington considers the ritual aspects of the game while the writer Nick Hornby describes how sport straddles the emotional territory between the sacred and the profane.

Producer: Anthony Denselow

Jaksot(101)

Benin plaque - the Oba with Europeans

Benin plaque - the Oba with Europeans

This week Neil MacGregor's history of the world is exploring the impact of the great European age of expansion and discovery during the 15th and 16th Centuries. In the last programme he described the ...

21 Syys 201013min

The mechanical galleon

The mechanical galleon

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things. This week he is exploring the impact of Western European travel, trade and conquest between 1450 and 1600. He kicks off with an exquisite miniatu...

20 Syys 201013min

Durer's Rhinoceros

Durer's Rhinoceros

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things that time has left behind. This week he is exploring vigorous empires that flourished across the world 600 years ago - visiting the Inca in South ...

17 Syys 201014min

Jade dragon cup

Jade dragon cup

The history of humanity as told through one hundred objects from the British Museum in London is this week exploring powerful empires around the world in the 14th and 15th centuries. Today he is with ...

16 Syys 201014min

Inca gold llama

Inca gold llama

The history of humanity - as told through one hundred objects from the British Museum in London - is back in South America. This week Neil MacGregor, the museum's director, is with the powerful elites...

15 Syys 201014min

Ming banknote

Ming banknote

This week Neil MacGregor's history of the world is exploring the great empires of around 1500 - the threshold of the modern era. Today he is in Ming Dynasty China and with a surviving example of some ...

14 Syys 201014min

Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent

Tughra of Suleiman the Magnificent

Neil MacGregor's world history as told through things. This week he is exploring the great empires of the world around 1500 - from the Inca in South America to the Ming in China and the Timurids in th...

13 Syys 201013min

Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island statue

Hoa Hakananai'a Easter Island statue

This week Neil MacGregor is exploring the sophisticated ways in which people connected to gods and ancestors in the Middle Ages. He is looking at religious images from India, France, Mexico and Turkey...

9 Heinä 201014min

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