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Free · ten artifacts a day

Anthropeum Game

Ten objects, two questions each

The Anthropeum game shows you a museum object and takes away the label. Ten a day, and for each one you pin a place on the world map and pick a period. Points come from how close you land on both, then you see where that put you against everyone playing today.

Open today's galleryOpen today's set
Anthropeum Game
  • Ten artifacts each day
  • Pin the place, choose the period
  • Drawn from 500,000 museum objects
  • Ranked against today's players

What Is the Anthropeum Game?

A geography and art history game built on museum collections.

Each day the Anthropeum game puts ten objects in front of you, the same ten for everybody. An object appears with its material, its shape and its decoration, and nothing else: no country, no century, no caption. Two guesses follow. You drop a pin on the world map where you think it was made, then choose the period it belongs to. Both are scored on distance, and the closer you land on each, the more the object is worth. At the end you see your rank among the people who played that day. There is no shortcut through the collection. The objects come from museum open-access holdings, roughly half a million of them, spanning every continent and several thousand years, so a run moves from a bronze figure to a length of printed cloth without warning.

A bronze figurine displayed under glass with its museum label covered
FIG. 01
Anthropeum Game@anthropeum

The label is the answer, so it is missing

Museum labels do the work for you: place, date, material, all in a tidy line under the object. Remove the label and what is left is a shape, a surface and a set of decisions somebody made centuries ago. That is the entire premise here. The object is shown without its card, and the two things the card would have told you are the two things you have to produce. It turns looking at an artefact into a problem rather than a reading exercise.

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Material narrows the map fast

Before style, before pattern, the material is usually the quickest clue. Porcelain points at a small number of places that produced it at scale. Jade points somewhere else entirely. Featherwork narrows the field further still. The useful habit is to ask what the object is made of before asking what it looks like. A material that could only be worked in certain regions eliminates most of the map in the first ten seconds, and the pin gets placed with far more confidence.

Close view of a glazed surface showing crackle and colour
FIG. 02
A world map with a single pin dropped on a coastline
FIG. 03
Anthropeum Game@anthropeum

Place first, period second

The two guesses interact. Getting the region roughly right cuts the plausible periods down sharply, because a place has a history and the object has to fit inside it. The reverse order is much harder. Choosing a century first leaves the whole world available, and a wide pin placed inside the correct era still loses most of the points. Anchoring on geography and letting the date follow is the more reliable sequence.

Anthropeum Game@anthropeum

Style is a signature, not a guess

Patterns travel, and the way they travel is often the answer. A motif that appears on two continents usually arrived on one of them through trade, and the version in front of you will carry the marks of whichever tradition made it. Writing is the most decisive clue of all when it appears, because scripts belong to places. Figures and proportions come next: the way a body is carved or a face is painted tends to sit inside a regional convention that repeated itself for centuries.

A painted pattern on a ceramic vessel beside an inscribed fragment
FIG. 04
Ten artifact thumbnails arranged in a grid, each without a caption
FIG. 05
Anthropeum Game@anthropeum

Ten objects make a very uneven day

A daily set is only as fair as its mix. Ten objects from one region would be a quiz about that region; ten spread across continents and millennia is a different test, and it is the one the game sets. The unevenness is the point. Everyone finds three or four of the ten familiar and the rest impossible, so the ranking at the end of the day is decided by the unfamiliar ones. That is also why a bad round and a good round can end up close together.

Anthropeum Game@anthropeum

A rank, not just a score

Closeness points tell you how you did against the object. A rank tells you how you did against people, which is the number most players actually want. Seeing it at the end of the day changes how the next day gets played. Knowing that a pin two countries away still beat most of the field makes the next uncertain guess easier to commit to, instead of hovering over the map until the object is revealed.

A leaderboard panel showing a daily rank after ten objects
FIG. 06

02

Why Choose the Anthropeum Game

What the collection and the two-guess format actually deliver.

01

Two guesses per object

A pin for the place and a pick for the period. Both are scored on closeness, so a good region with a shaky date still returns something rather than nothing.

02

Half a million objects

The pool comes from museum open-access collections, covering every continent and several thousand years. Ten a day means the set rarely repeats.

03

Objects shown without labels

No country, no date, no caption until you commit. The reveal carries the full record, so a wrong pin still teaches you what the object actually is.

04

The same ten for everyone

A shared daily set is what makes the ranking meaningful. Two players on the same day are answering exactly the same objects, not a random draw each.

05

Ranking against the field

Points measure closeness to the object; the rank measures closeness against other players. Both appear at the end, and the second one is usually the more honest.

06

No app, no account

The game runs in a browser on a phone or a desktop, and the window on this page loads today's set directly. Nothing needs installing before the first object.

03

How to Use the Anthropeum Game

One day's gallery, from the first object to the rank.

  1. 01

    Open today's set

    Ten artifacts load in order, the same ten everyone else is seeing, with the first object shown large and unlabelled.

  2. 02

    Pin the place

    Drop a marker on the world map where you believe the object was made. Zooming in helps when the answer feels regional.

  3. 03

    Choose the period

    Pick the era you think it belongs to. The pin and the period are scored together once both are submitted.

  4. 04

    See the rank

    Each object reveals its real origin and date with your score, and the day closes with your position among everyone who played.

04

Who Visits the Anthropeum Game

Players who like objects more than questions.

Recognising a case they once stood in front of is the whole pleasure. The rank afterwards makes a private visit into something to compare with friends.
MRMuseum regularsRooms they have walked through before
The pinning is familiar, the dating is new. Working out that a shape belongs to a century, not just a country, is the part that changes how they look at objects.
MPMap puzzle playersUsed to dropping pins under pressure
Ten objects a day is a revision habit that costs ten minutes. Materials and decorative patterns come up repeatedly, and the reveal supplies the terminology for each.
AHArt history studentsRevising materials and motifs
Seeing what a collection holds is a decent way to decide whether a museum is worth the trip. The daily set keeps surfacing objects from places they had not considered.
TPTrip plannersLooking for museums worth a detour

05

Anthropeum Game Questions

What to know before your first gallery.

Ten Objects, No Labels

Today's set is loaded in the window above. Pin the first object roughly, commit to a period, and let the reveal tell you which of the two guesses was the weaker one.

Play the Anthropeum game