In 15-minute presentations broadcast on weekdays on Radio 4, MacGregor used objects of ancient art, industry, technology and arms, all of which are in the British Museum's collections, as an introduction to parts of human history.

[1] A book to accompany the series, A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor, was published by Allen Lane on 28 October 2010.

[3][4][5][6] The ownership claims of the British Museum over some of these objects is highly contested, in particular those belonging to the Benin Bronzes and the Elgin Marbles, which are the subject of continued international controversy.

[7] The programme series, described as "a landmark project",[8] is billed as 'A history of humanity' told through a hundred objects from all over the world in the British Museum's collection.

In these programmes, I'm travelling back in time, and across the globe, to see how we humans over 2 million years have shaped our world and been shaped by it, and I'm going to tell this story exclusively through the things that humans have made: all sorts of things, carefully designed, and then either admired and preserved, or used, broken and thrown away.

I've chosen just a hundred objects from different points on our journey, from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card.

[9]Accompanying the series is a website, described by The Guardian as "even more ambitious [than the radio series itself] that encourages users to submit items of their own for a place in world history", along with much interactive content, detailed information on all the objects featured in the radio programmes and links to 350 other museum collections across the UK.

At the time of the writing of Kennedy's article, just before the start of the last week of the series, the radio broadcasts regularly had up to four million listeners, while the podcast downloads had totalled 10,441,884.

In addition, members of the public had uploaded 3,240 objects with the largest single contribution coming from Glasgow historian Robert Pool who submitted 120 objects all relating to the City of Glasgow, and other museums a further 1,610, and 531 museums and heritage sites across the UK had been mounting linked events – an unprecedented partnership, MacGregor said.

"[14] Dominic Sandbrook in The Telegraph said that the "joyously highbrow" series "deserves to take its place alongside television classics such as Kenneth Clark's Civilisation and Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man.

[16] Addressing critiques by the same project of the Radio 4 series that pointed to the programme's perceived failure [...] ‘[ to engage with the provenance and repatriation of objects]’,[17] especially those which were collected under colonial conditions of duress, the response project sought instead to democratize curatorial narratives with input from source and diaspora communities who hold long-standing relationships with objects now-held in museums.

Co-initiated and facilitated by Dr Mirjam Brusius and Dr Alice Stevenson, the project works collaboratively and has an editorial board with members from India, Namibia, Thailand, Ghana, Nigeria, Torres Strait Islands, Aotearoa, Jamaica, USA, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

[22] The object chosen to be featured on the programme was an oil painting depicting a young woman that was nominated by Peter Lewis.

Neil MacGregor and a roundtable of guests, comprising Mary Beard, Chibundu Onuzo, Scarlett Curtis, David Attenborough, and Hisham Matar, discussed adding a 101st object to represent how the world has changed in the past decade since the end of the original series.

[25] The objects ultimately chosen were the British Museum's collection of 'Dark Water, Burning World' sculptures by Syrian-British artist Issam Kourbaj.

They depict small, fragile boats filled with matchsticks - representing the plight of refugees of the Syrian Civil War in particular and migrants in general.

The prize, worth £100,000, was presented to the museum by Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, in a ceremony at London on 15 June 2011.

[27] During 2016 and 2017 a touring exhibition of many of the one hundred objects, also titled History of the World in 100 Objects, was held in a number of countries and territories, including Australia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, and China (first at the National Museum of China in Beijing, and then at Shanghai Museum).

Object 90 (Jade bi with poem) was not included in the exhibition held in China because it may have been looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.