Created over 250 years ago, the British Museum was the very first national public museum in the world. Today it houses a collection of seven million objects and attracts annually some six million visitors, who come to discover how human beings overmillennia and across the Earth have found ways of exploring their place in the universe. The British Museum has been called 'The Memory of Mankind ' and this film shows how various, extraordinary and rewarding that memory can be. From the first great human invention of a chopping tool two million years ago to contemporaryartwork from around the globe, we explore the highlights of the collection and see how dedicated research, scholarship and conservation come together to ensure that this is an unparalleled museum of the world for the world.