What is Anthropeum?
Anthropeum is a daily guessing game set in a museum. Each day you are shown ten real objects from collections like that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a carved figure, a painted bowl, a piece of jewellery, a tool or a textile, spanning around 5,000 years of human history. For each one, you guess where in the world it was made and roughly when. Hints are available if you are stuck, and at the end you see how your answers compare with other players. Nobody is expected to know these objects by heart, which is what makes it fun: you learn to read the clues in materials, patterns and styles, and you leave knowing a little more about cultures you may never have thought about. It works well as a slow, curious puzzle with breakfast. Anthropeum suits museum lovers, history fans and anyone who enjoys a bit of detective work with beautiful objects.
How to play
- Look at the object and its photo.
- Guess the region where it was made and roughly when.
- Use hints if needed. Ten objects make one day's game.
Quick facts
- Typical time
- 5–10 min
- Difficulty
- Medium–hard
- Price
- Free to play.
- Account
- Not needed.
- On a phone
- Works in your phone's browser. Nothing to install.
- Each day
- Ten objects, with hints if you need them.
Tips to get better
- Look at the material first. What an object is made of often places it. Jade and lacquer point to East Asia, and a blue-green glaze on small figures often means ancient Egypt.
- Study how people are drawn. The way a culture shows faces and bodies is its clearest signature. Compare the stiff side-on figures of Egyptian art with the lifelike bodies of Greek sculpture.
- Look for writing. Any script settles the region: hieroglyphs, cuneiform, Chinese characters, Arabic calligraphy, Greek letters.
- Date it by technique. Plain stone and simple pottery can be very old. Fine porcelain, oil paint and printed fabric come later.
- Don't judge age by condition. Gold doesn't tarnish, so a gleaming object can be 3,000 years old, and a battered one can be 200.
- No idea? Play the odds. Big museum collections are rich in Egypt, Greece and Rome, China, Japan and Europe. One of those is a better blind guess than anywhere else.
Who it's for
If you like wandering round museums, you'll like Anthropeum. Nobody knows all of this, and that's the point: you guess from materials and style, and learn as you go. It's slower and quieter than most daily games, with ten objects to think about. If you want a quick hit or a clear right or wrong, look elsewhere. With a coffee, it's a small pleasure.
