Objects of the exercise... vital pieces of the past that tell the story of mankind

If past form is anything to judge by, a picture of life in early 21st century Britain is as likely to be captured by the detritus dug up from landfill sites as it is to be taken only from museum pieces and digital archives.

If asked to name 10 things that summed up how you have lived your time on earth, what would they be? What stories do they evoke – not just about you but also about the times you lived in?

It's not just personal histories that can be told through objects. The stories of communities, countries and continents can also be viewed through them – although the more conventional way of presenting and teaching history tends to be via events and personalities.

Curators at the British Museum spent two years choosing 100 items from its collection that would tell the story of the development of mankind and the planet. In all, the BM and the BBC together took four years to plan how to piece together a joint venture which includes 100 15-minute programmes aired in three tranches on Radio 4 and a separate 13-episode CBBC TV series called Relic, in which children unlock the mysteries of items at the British Museum during night-time adventures.

Also part of the package are BBC World Service omnibus editions of the radio programmes and an interactive digital programme available for free on the web, involving 350 museums across Britain and objects from their collections that tell the history of their area and its relationship with the wider world.

The thing about objects, whether a stone age axe or a credit card, is that they tell you about the skills needed to make them, and the minds of those who crafted them, says Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum. He presents the Radio 4 series, but also heard are the voices of contributors including playwright Wole Soyinka, Sir Bob Geldof, food writer Madhur Jaffrey and others.

The responsibility of deciding exactly which 100 items to choose from the hundreds of thousands in the BM's collection was taken on by Jeremy Hill, lead curator of A History of the World in 100 Objects, after discussion with nine heads of department and around 90 staff.

"There was a certain amount of argy-bargy and even a balloon debate involved in the process," he says. "At the root of it was a desire to try a new way of looking at world history and about getting away from the traditional idea of history with Britain and Europe at its centre. The objects chosen had to cover the whole world between them, but also

relate different places to one another."

The landmark Radio 4 series starts next Monday, in a daily weekday slot of 9.45am. The programmes move chronologically through two million years and include items that were made in every part of the globe. The journey begins when, at the age of eight, MacGregor visited the British Museum for the first time and came face-to-face with an Egyptian mummy – an object that has intrigued him ever since.

Hornedjitef was a priest who died around 2,250 years ago, and he designed a coffin that, he believed, would help him to navigate his way to the afterlife. Little did he know that this afterlife would be as a museum exhibit in London. As the MacGregor explains, the ornate coffin holds secrets to the understanding of his religion, society and Egypt's connections to the rest of the world.

Also featured early in the series are a primitive cutting tool fashioned from stone in Tanzania and the Standard of Ur, a mysterious and beautifully decorated box excavated by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the 1920s, in an area that is part of modern-day Iraq. It is embellished with lapis lazuli and white shells, and dates back 5,000 years.

"The box's decorations shows a king or leader feasting, and farmers bringing food for him to eat," says Jeremy Hill. "On the other side of the box there is a scene of the king leading his men into battle against some rival force. This comes from a time when politics and power struggles were emerging. The materials used to make the box – lapis lazuli found only in one mountain in Afghanistan, about 1,000 miles from Iraq, and the white mosaic from the Persian Gulf, show how far people then were travelling to trade. People will always want to come and see the real thing, but bringing the objects to life on the radio takes them to a whole new audience. The medium allows you tell the story in a new way. We couldn't have done this without the BBC, and the BBC couldn't have made the series without the expertise at the British Museum. It's a public partnership, with both organisations doing what they do best."

Each item will be displayed on the History of the World website, and can be inspected at close quarters, as will items contributed by museums across the British regions.The National Museum of Scotland's selection includes the stuffed corpse of scientific miracle Dolly the Sheep.

So far 99 items have been chosen for the 100 programmes to be aired by the end of the year on Radio 4. The 100th object will be chosen from suggestions submitted by the public for something which evokes the era we're living in now. The BBC would also like members of the public to upload pictures of any interesting object they own which has local or global interest, for possible inclusion in an additional "People's 10 Objects" chosen for each BBC Local website. It'll be like Antiques Roadshow without the money element.

While we ponder that challenge, it's fair to wonder whether radio really is the best medium for a history series with such great ambition, where experts describe and discuss with great clarity but still... you long to see the pictures of that beautiful wedding trophy which tells the story of the struggle of securing dynasties in early medieval Europe.

"Radio excels at ideas and concepts better than TV," says controller of Radio 4 Mark Damazer. He argues that approaching this kind of subject for television would require expensive foreign filming, and a great deal of distracting pictures. Long months spent filming would also mean that the expertise used in the programme would not have been available and certainly that 100 segments would not have been possible. The 100 short radio programmes are costing less than 500,000.

"Objects vary from the unbelievably precious to the more mundane," says Damazer. "But the story of a plate made in celebration of the Russian Revolution is enough to get you into that whole episode in history, what it meant and how it affected life afterwards, and not just for people in that part of the world.

"I really think radio pulls this off better than TV would, and the complete package represents the best kind of public service partnership. The British Museum had the objects, the presenter, the academic and research skills; we at the BBC had the production skills, the technology and the reach to take this exciting material to a wide audience."

n A History of the World in 100 Objects begins on Radio 4 next Monday, January 18, at 9.45am, and will be repeated that evening at 7.45pm. CBBC will show Relic: Guardians of the Museum at 4.30pm on Thursdays from January 21. Objects discussed can be seen in detail at bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld from next Monday. For information on how to upload photos of objects owned by the public, see the BBC Local websites.

n A report on artefacts from this region featured in A History of the World will be included in the Yorkshire Post Culture supplement on Friday, January 22.