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I

Hall I

We built

From the archivist

They shaped stone before they shaped words. Then walls, then cities, then machines that shaped the world in turn. This hall keeps what their hands raised, and what still stands.

17 fragments in this hall · Africa 8 · Asia 3 · Europe 1 · Americas 2 · Oceania 3

A dark grey-green stone tool shaped like a long teardrop, seen from one face against a grey background; broad, shallow scars left by removed flakes cover its surface and meet along a sharp outline.

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c. 1.4 million years ago

A handaxe from Olduvai Gorge

Olduvai Gorge, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania · Africa

Laboratory photographs in five panels. At the top, modern experimental bones burnt to black and chalky white sit beside unburnt yellow ones, first under natural light and then under violet ultraviolet light. Below, tiny fossil bones of small mammals from Wonderwerk Cave are lined up on grey strips on glass slides; under ultraviolet light the burnt ones turn dark while a few unburnt ones, marked with asterisks, glow. A close up shows one strip with a one centimetre scale bar.

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c. 1 million years ago

Early fire at Wonderwerk Cave

Between Danielskuil and Kuruman, Northern Cape, South Africa · Africa

Black and white photograph from 1959: four roughly worked stones lie on a pale cloth, two light and pitted, one smaller and grey, one dark with sharp flake scars, recorded among archaeological finds from Gesher Benot Ya'aqov.

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c. 780,000 years ago

The hearths of Gesher Benot Ya'aqov

Banks of the Jordan River near the Bnot Ya'akov Bridge, northern Israel · Asia

A long, thin wooden spear lying where it was found, dark brown and slightly curved, pressed into grey lake sediment on the floor of an excavation, with a small white label card beside its lower end.

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c. 300,000 years ago

The Schöningen spears

Schöningen, Lower Saxony, Germany · Europe

A single stone spear point, long and leaf shaped, standing upright against a dark grey background: yellow chert shading to orange and red at the tip and base, its faces covered with shallow scars where flakes were struck off, its edges finely serrated and its base concave, with a shallow channel running up from the base.

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c. 13,000 years ago

A Clovis point

Sevier County, Utah, United States · Americas

A satellite view of a green highland valley in false colour: forested ridges and folded mountains frame a broad valley floor patterned with small fields, bright rectangular plantations, winding rivers, a pale patch of town and an airstrip, with a few white clouds and their shadows at the edges.

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8200 to 2000 BCE

Kuk Swamp

Near Mount Hagen, Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea · Oceania

A still green lake fills the bottom of a volcanic crater; its far wall is a band of dark basalt cliff topped and fringed by gum trees and scrub, under a pale sky.

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before 4600 BCE

The eel traps of Budj Bim

Tae Rak (Lake Condah), Kurtonitj and Tyrendarra, south-western Victoria, Australia · Oceania

The Great Pyramid seen from close to one corner against a deep blue sky: its stepped faces of weathered, sand coloured limestone blocks rise to a point, with a scatter of tiny visitors along the base giving the scale.

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c. 2560 BCE

The Great Pyramid of Giza

Giza, Greater Cairo, Egypt · Africa

In pale orange sand under a clear blue sky, a small sandstone chapel with a gateway of two sloping towers stands among the remains of steep pyramids: on the right, a tall pyramid of stepped courses; behind and to the left, lower pyramids cut short, their tops gone.

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270 BCE to 350 CE

The pyramids of Meroë

Begrawiya (Bajrawiya), River Nile State, Sudan · Africa

Seen from slightly above, a life-size grey clay soldier in Pit 1 wears armour of small riveted plates over a knee-length robe; his hair is tied in a topknot, his eyes are lowered, his empty right hand once held a weapon. Other soldiers and the leg of a clay horse stand around him.

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246 to 210 BCE

The Terracotta Army

Lintong district, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China · Asia

A vast stepped pyramid of grey stone seen from the front under a blue sky streaked with white cloud: a central staircase rises through its terraces to a flat top where small figures of visitors stand; in the foreground, a paved plaza, low platforms and a few people with sun hats and umbrellas.

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170 to 310 CE

The Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan

San Juan Teotihuacán, State of Mexico, Mexico · Americas

A very tall, slender grey granite stela standing in a green park under a blue sky, carved on its face with rows of false windows and beams like the storeys of a tower and topped by a rounded head; a smaller plain stela stands to its right and a round thatched building sits at its foot among trees.

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c. 300 CE

The Obelisk of Aksum

Aksum, Tigray, Ethiopia · Africa

Inside the ruined Great Mosque of Kilwa: rows of weathered grey and ochre coral stone arches on slender pillars carry a roof of low domes, some patched with dark lichen, with daylight and green trees showing through the far arches.

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1000 to 1350 CE

The Great Mosque of Kilwa

Kilwa Kisiwani island, Lindi Region, Tanzania · Africa

Close view of the top of a dry-stone wall in the Great Enclosure: rectangular granite blocks, grey and ochre and spotted with lichen, laid in even courses without mortar, with a band of darker stones near the top and a tree branch against a pale sky.

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1100 to 1500

Great Zimbabwe

Near Masvingo, Zimbabwe · Africa

The five lotus-bud towers of Angkor Wat, dark grey sandstone against a pale blue sky, seen from the west across a pond with pink water lilies and a strip of grass; tall sugar palms stand in front of the long galleried facade, where small figures of visitors gather.

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1113 to 1150 CE

Angkor Wat

Angkor, near Siem Reap, Cambodia · Asia

Bete Giyorgis seen from the rim of its pit: a church carved down into reddish rock, its flat roof shaped as a large cross of three stepped outlines, standing free inside a deep square trench, with bare rock, green trees and hillsides of the town around it.

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1150 to 1250 CE

The rock-hewn churches of Lalibela

Lalibela, Amhara Region, Ethiopia · Africa

Ruined walls of dark basalt prisms stacked crosswise in alternating courses, overgrown with shrubs and vines; a gap between two walls opens on a lower enclosure, with a coconut palm against a pale sky.

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1180 to 1500

Nan Madol

Madolenihmw, Pohnpei State, Federated States of Micronesia · Oceania