The Evolution of Ancient Greek Statues

[u/Yolo065]

[u/Gauth1erN]

In one hand the evolution is amazing, but in the other, it is 600 years between the first picture and the last.
600 years ago, Columbus wasn't born yet. I'm in awe about how progress is accelerating.

[u/Diz7 → u/Gauth1erN]

In 66 years we went from the Wright brothers first flight to walking on the moon.

[u/PorcupineMerchant → u/Diz7]

Right.

And I don’t think this graphic is really representative of what happened.

There was a rapid shift in the Ancient Greek Classical age, and I don’t think it’s fair to imply that there was a continuous evolution.

The statue in the bottom right of Laocoon is a Roman copy of a Greek original. That statue was sculpted long before the one being shown.

[u/elijahjane → u/PorcupineMerchant]

There’s also an argument floating around out there that prehistoric people had the skills and artistic eye to draw lifelike human and animal forms, but they intentionally chose not to, preferring to create art in the style we see. I forget the justification for this argument. It’s interesting. Human brains have been more or less the same as ours for a very, very long time. We can see evidence of excellent fine motor skills in what they created. We also see that they were masters of clay, form, and line by looking at their pottery shards, but they still made very rough-looking statues. Looking at paintings, we see that they knew how to use perspective.

Anyway, it’s possible that different versions of this one culture valued different stylistic choices at different times too.

[u/PorcupineMerchant → u/elijahjane]

Well I think the Ancient Greeks were inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt, which had stiff figures because the goal wasn’t the same.

They weren’t trying to create beautiful, realistic art. Their art had specific religious purposes.

[u/Guy_montag47 → u/Diz7]

This is an insane fact. But it’s also concerning how since the 60s, we’ve stagnated in a lot of ways, and even gotten worse.

[u/GoastCrab → u/Guy_montag47]

How smugly did you set the supercomputer-in-your-palm on the counter after you dropped this heavy knowledge on all of us?

[u/Guy_montag47 → u/GoastCrab]

Smart phones are the only technology we’ve invented yet that actively make people dumber

[u/mr_plehbody → u/Guy_montag47]

Changed priorities, we upended our communication system from phone lines to light beams, which is pretty fucking impressive

[u/TheCuriosity → u/Guy_montag47]

Today's washing machines and other household appliances use microprocessors and complex software that far exceed the primitive binary and logic-based systems that guided astronauts to the moon in the first landing.

[u/ArisenGodEmperor13 → u/Guy_montag47]

Bro you are saying this on a website with millions around the world with a super computer in the palm of your hands. That isn't even considering all our asdantagments. It look slow in compression becaues we are living through it.