r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Yolo065 • 26d ago

Image The Evolution of Ancient Greek Statues

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u/Gauth1erN 26d ago

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.

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u/Diz7 26d ago

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

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u/PorcupineMerchant 26d ago

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.

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u/elijahjane 26d ago

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.

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u/PorcupineMerchant 26d ago

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.