纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 062希伯来星盘（8）（在线收听）

Against this European background of growing anti-Semitism, Christian Spain could still seem comparatively tolerant. But, there were already signs of trouble, and the survival of Muslim Granada was a reminder of unfinished business. The intellectual alliance of Christians, Jews and Muslims would soon be swept away by a militant Spanish monarchy, intent on following the rest of Europe and asserting Christian dominance. In the years around 1500, Jews and Muslims would be persecuted and expelled from Spain. The 'convivencia' was over.

Eventually, the astrolabe, this one intricate object which could do so many things, would be displaced by a whole range of separate instruments - the globe, the printed map, the sextant, the chronometer and the compass - all of them doing a part of the job that the single astrolabe could do alone.

Tomorrow we're far south of Spain, way beyond the reach of our astrolabe, in the forest world of West Africa, and again we have a high-status object which represents a huge cultural achievement. It's a sculpture, a head of a ruler from Ife in present-day Nigeria. Like the astrolabe, it's both an object of great beauty and of high technology ... and it's one that in the twentieth century would astonish the whole of Europe.