A 2nd transcript of the BBC series "How Art Made The World - more Human than Human" by Georgie Gutteridge

Egyptians:

the Egyptians depicted humans that had proportions that were more normal, unlike the exaggerated proportions found in the sculptures of the prehistoric nomads. 

http://cdn1.animhut.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/050216_rfoster_mp_his_egypt0048.jpg

The Egyptians aimed to show each part of the body accurately & depict the most recognizable features of the body without it looking weird. 

Human bodies needed to be shown clearly to depict the whole person in their afterlife. 

Despite ancient Egyptian history stretching over 2700 years, their way of depicting the human body never changed - something powerful preserved and controlled this style of the human body. 

It has been discovered that a grid was used to make each and every one of their pictures consistent. 

http://www.legon.demon.co.uk/canon.htm

They did this, not because their brains were hard wired to enjoy exaggeration, but their culture overpowered this impulse & established very strict rules that governed the depiction of the human body. 

Culture is King in this case. 

A transcript of the BBC series "How Art Made The World - more Human than Human" by Georgie Gutteridge

Prehistoric Sculpture 

The range of bodies styles that have been made or drawn by humans throughout history is breath taking.   All images of the body have something in common, they aren't realistic they are naturalistic and often exaggerated in some way or another. 

The two images below from: 

http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/episodes/human/venus/

The video "How Art Made The World" took us back in time to discover why we draw our bodies so "weird".  At the start of last century, three archeologists found something very important, a figure of a woman that was 25000 years old, near the small town of Willendorf in Austria.

This statue now known as the Venus of Willendorf, was made by nomadic people thousands of years ago.  It is 4 inches high made out of limestone and is now housed  in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria.  It is worth 60 million Dollars. 

The Venus of Willendorf is very unrealistic and some parts of the body very exaggerated such as the breasts, stomach and genitals. For 20 000 years humans made statues that were exaggerated in this way (parts were bigger than others). 

But why did these artists do this?

The video "How Art Made The World" explains one theory through making comparisons between seagull behaviour and the primitive human brain. Seagull chicks are attracted to sticks that are exaggerated versions of their mother's beaks and in the same way primitive humans were drawn to exaggerated depictions of what mattered to them i.e  the pregnant human female.

http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/prehistoricart/