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(NARRATOR) Images dominate our lives,

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They tell us how to behave,

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- What to think,
- (BLAIR) Yes, Prime Minister.

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Even how to feel,

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They mould and define us,

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But why do these images,

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the pictures, symbols
and the art we see around us every day,

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have such a powerful hold on us?

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The answer lies not here in our time

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but thousands of years ago.

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Because when
our ancient ancestors first created

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the images that made sense of their world,

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they produced a visual legacy
which has helped to shape our own.

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In this series we'll be travelling around the globe,

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discovering the world's most stunning treasures,

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We'll see how the struggles of early artists

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led to the triumphs
of the world's great civilisations.

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Our journey will take us through
a hundred thousand years of history,

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We'll be witnessing some of the extraordinary
ceremonies of the world's oldest artistic cultures.

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And we'll reveal how they unlock
the deepest secrets of ancient art,

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We'll be hearing from the people
who made these discoveries,

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(DAVID ATTENBOROUGH)
I have very vivid memories of looking up

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and seeing this huge barramundi fish
on the ceiling.

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It was unforgettable,

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(SPIVEY) And we'll be using science to uncover

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how thousands of years ago the human mind
drove us to create astonishing images,

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You'll never look at our world
the same way again,

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for this is the epic story
of how we humans made art

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and how art made us human.

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These people are looking at something
we all see dozens of times a day,

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It inspires us

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and manipulates us,

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it affects what we think of others

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and even what we think of ourselves,

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It is the human body,

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No other image dominates our lives so completely.

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Pictures of the body fill our high streets,
our magazines, our television screens.

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And then there's the art world.

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The human form has obsessed
some of the world's greatest artists,

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The range of bodies they've created
is breathtaking,

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And yet there's something
that all these images have in common,

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Whatever their use

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and wherever they appear,

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the world's most popular and influential
images of the human body

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share this one thing,

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Have you noticed that none of these images
resembles a real human being?

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I mean, do you Know anyone
who actually looKs liKe that?

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Just imagine if human bodies

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were like the images we created of them,

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Imagine if we walked around looking like this,

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The fact is, people rarely create images
of the body that are realistic,

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What's going on?

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Why is our world so dominated
by images of the body that are unrealistic?

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If we can solve this mystery,

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we can reveal something
not just about our bodies but about ourselves,

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something really fundamental
about us as human beings.

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To do it, we need to start
not here in the modern world

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but bacK in time,

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when our ancient ancestors began creating
the very first images of the human body.

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It's a journey that starts here
in the north east of Austria,

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where the great river Danube
winds its way through the Wachau Valley,

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Today, this land is cultivated
by farmers and wine growers,

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But there was a time
many thousands of years ago

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when the people who lived in this valley
weren't settled farmers

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but hunter-gatherers
foraging for what food they could find.

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The same was true all over Europe.

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What's remarkable about the people
who passed through this valley

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is something that they left behind them.

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Nomadic people lived and hunted in small groups
and rarely stayed in one place long,

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so knowing where to look for evidence
of their lives has always been hard,

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But at the start of the last century, excavation
began near the little village of Willendorf,

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It was led by three Austrian archaeologists,

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who knew they could make their reputations
with an important find,

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They didn't know the half of it,

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What was found was more startling
than anyone could have imagined.

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It happened on 7th August 1908.

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The three archaeologists
weren't on their site here above the village.

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They'd retired to a nearby tavern
to sample some of the local vintage.

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It was one of their workmen
who made the discovery.

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He pulled from the mud
the figure of a woman, completely intact.

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It was a statue and it was 25,000 years old.

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The three archaeologists soon started squabbling

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over who would get the credit for the find.

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Theirs was a feud that was never really settled,

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but they did decide one thing, a name.

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They called her the Venus of Willendorf.

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Now, if you're a little surprised that nomadic
people lugged this thing around with them,

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then don't worry, this isn't the real statue,

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This is.

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Just four inches high,

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carved of limestone

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and quite dinky enough to be carried from
place to place by the nomad who created her.

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The term ''Venus'' could be applied
to just about any female nude from the past,

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but there's something particularly special
about this little lady.

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She's special, in fact, in a way that those
three archaeologists could never have predicted.

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She's certainly far too grand to live in Willendorf.

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That's why she stays here,

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in the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

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Despite a vast collection
of artefacts from around the world,

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this Venus is the museum's
most prized possession,

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It's not every day you get to carry
a piece of limestone worth 60 million dollars,

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She's an outstanding relic of our ancient past,

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but she's also more than that,

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This lady is our first clue

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as to why the modern world is so dominated
by unrealistic images of the body,

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The Venus is clearly unrealistic,

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Her breasts, stomach,
hips and thighs are grotesquely big,

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Even her sexual organs
are extremely pronounced,

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She may have been a symbol
of fertility or motherhood,

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but that doesn't explain
why her arms are almost nonexistent,

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why her face isn't shown at all,

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She was made with great care and skill,

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She doesn't look like this by accident,

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This is all deliberate,

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For some reason, the people
who once hunted and lived in these hills

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felt compelled to exaggerate some parts
of her body and ignore others completely,

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What's more, they were not alone,

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It seems that this compulsion
continued for many thousands of years,

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Let me show you what I mean,

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Imagine that this line of trees
represents the entire history of us as a species,

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modern human beings.

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We've been around
for something like 150,000 years.

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Well, it wasn't till around here,

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that's about 80,000 years ago,

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that we began to make anything
that you would ever call art.

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What's more, it wasn't until we got here,

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that's about 30,000 years ago,

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just before our friend the Venus of Willendorf,

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that we started to make statues
and images of the human body.

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What's really remarkable about this

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is that over the next 20,000 years

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whenever one person made an image of another

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it showed the same exaggerated features

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and they cropped up in all sorts of places.

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From the Russian steppes to southern Europe,

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wherever people made statues of the body,

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they exaggerated the same key features
and utterly ignored others,

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just as they had with the Venus of Willendorf,

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But why? What drove early humans to do this?

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Why were they more stimulated
by images like this?

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It's a question that's baffled experts for years,

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But now one man believes he's found the answer,

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He is not an archaeologist
or even an expert in art,

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He's a brain scientist,

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(SCIENTIST) I think it's fair to say that until about
ten years ago I had absolutely no interest in art,

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I started asking myself, as a neuroscientist,

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''Why are these images so beautiful?''

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This raises the question ''What is art?
Why is art beautiful? How does it worK?''

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''What's going on in the brain of the viewer
when you looK at a great work of art?''

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(SPIVEY) Professor Ramachandran wondered

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if there was something
about the brains of ancient humans

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that explained why the Venus is the shape she is,

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When you look at the Venus figurine,

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what strikes you immediately is that
certain features are not emphasised,

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they are played down or ignored,

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such as the face and the arms,

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whereas other features such as the breasts
and the stomach are grotesquely exaggerated.

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The question is, why did the artist do this?

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What was going on in the artist's brain
when he created this image?

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Well, obviously, you can't go back in time
and study his brain,

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but I realised

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that one clue might come from research that was
done on seagulls nearly 50 years ago at Oxford.

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(SPIVEY) Yes, you heard him,

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He did say seagulls,

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Professor Ramachandran began to wonder

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if a herring-gull colony, like this one
on the coast of Spain, could provide an answer.

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To be honest with you,
I find it hard to believe how seagulls -

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seagulls! - can explain the shape
of the Venus of Willendorf.

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Apparently, it's to do
with the behaviour of the gull chicKs.

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Professor Ramachandran became interested in
scientific research into the chicks of herring-gulls,

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As soon as they hatch, they tap the beak
of their mother to ask for food

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and, sure enough, she obliges,

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The researchers discovered the chicks do this
not because they recognise their mother

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but because they're stimulated
by the sight of the red stripe on her beak

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and they proved it with a beautifully simple test,

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What the scientists did
was show the chicks not their mother's beak

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but a stick with a red stripe on it.

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Let's see what happens.

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The chicks are happily tapping away.

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It's awfully sweet.

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The brain of a gull chick
is clearly stimulated by the sight of a red stripe,

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Nothing, it seems, gets it more excited
or so it was thought,

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What the scientists did next was to show
the chicks a stick with three red stripes on.

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Doesn't look much liKe a beak,

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but it was their reaction to this
that so intrigued Professor Ramachandran.

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Can't get enough of it. Just looK at that.

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The chicks are tapping not only more often

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but more enthusiastically than they did
with the stick that only had one stripe on it.

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Even when I offer them a choice, the chicKs
prefer three red stripes to the single one.

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It even ignores the single stripe,

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But exactly how does all this relate
to the shape of the Venus of Willendorf?

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When the chick looks at this elongated object
with three red stripes,

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it responds even more to this strange object
than it does to a natural beak.

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So, what I'd like to argue is

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that if seagulls had an art gallery

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they would take this long thin stick
with the three red stripes, hang it on the wall,

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pay millions of dollars to purchase it,

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worship it, call it a Picasso.

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This would be a great work of art
but they wouldn't understand why.

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They would say, ''The damn thing
doesn't resemble anything.

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''Why am I mesmerised by it?''

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I think there's an analogy here in that
what's going on in the brains of our ancestors,

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the artists who created these Venus figurines,

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were producing grossly,
almost grotesquely exaggerated versions,

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the equivalent for their brain of what the stick
with the three red stripes is for the chick's brain.

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(SPIVEY) So the brains of the hunter-gatherers
who made the Venuses

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were preprogrammed
to exaggerate what mattered most,

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They were living in a harsh ice-age environment,

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Features of fertility and fatness
would have been highly desirable,

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so their brains compelled them
to exaggerate these features above others,

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But can a primeval instinct really explain

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why all human beings create
unrealistic images of the body?

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This herring-gull theory suggests

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that the Venus figure looks the way she does

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simply because of how the brain
of the person who made her was wired up.

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Well, if that was true for the nomads, it should
also be true for people who came after them.

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Let's find out.

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After more than 100,000 years
of nomadic hunting and gathering,

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life for humans across the globe
was about to change,

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It began with the weather,

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Here in North Africa,

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the sort of nomadic lifestyle that created
the Venus figurines would soon be impossible,

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A major change in climate
meant that water became scarce.

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Lush vegetation began to die away

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and with it disappeared all the wildlife
on which the hunters depended.

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Forced to settle somewhere
where there was water,

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nomadic people came from far and wide

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and gathered along the banks of one major river.

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That river was the Nile,

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and the civilisation that flourished there
is crucial to our story.

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By 5000 BC,
Egypt had become a fully settled civilisation,

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one of the first on earth,

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Because the Nile flooded with precise regularity

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Egyptians could build
a stable agricultural existence,

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This in turn produced an organised system
of government and a strict social hierarchy,

236
00:20:55,007 --> 00:21:02,482
But Egyptians were also the first settled humans
to use images of the body extensively in their art,

237
00:21:03,047 --> 00:21:05,117
So, what we need to find out is

238
00:21:05,287 --> 00:21:10,805
what happened to the herring-gull instinct
of exaggeration in this new civilisation?

239
00:21:14,567 --> 00:21:17,923
Where we are now
begins to answer that question.

240
00:21:18,087 --> 00:21:24,083
We're several hundred feet underground in
the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses VI,

241
00:21:24,247 --> 00:21:26,715
and I am literally surrounded

242
00:21:26,887 --> 00:21:30,641
by thousands of images of the human body.

243
00:21:39,367 --> 00:21:41,961
This place was carved out of solid rock

244
00:21:42,127 --> 00:21:44,516
and decorated by highly skilled artists

245
00:21:44,687 --> 00:21:48,077
as a home for the Pharaoh in the afterlife,

246
00:21:51,367 --> 00:21:54,006
But, unlike the Venus of Willendorf,

247
00:21:54,167 --> 00:21:57,603
these bodies don't have exaggerated features,

248
00:21:57,767 --> 00:22:00,804
They don't have swollen hips or breasts,

249
00:22:06,407 --> 00:22:09,524
In fact, their arms, legs, head and feet

250
00:22:09,687 --> 00:22:13,123
are all just about the right size,

251
00:22:16,167 --> 00:22:21,161
So, the nomadic way of showing the body
appears to be dead and gone,

252
00:22:21,527 --> 00:22:24,087
The primeval instinct to exaggerate

253
00:22:24,247 --> 00:22:28,399
clearly didn't survive
in this new modern civilisation,

254
00:22:30,367 --> 00:22:36,476
The herring-gull instinct may have led the
nomads to exaggerate their images of the body,

255
00:22:36,647 --> 00:22:39,115
but that's not what's happening here.

256
00:22:39,287 --> 00:22:44,042
These images are driven
by something altogether different.

257
00:22:48,767 --> 00:22:50,758
But what is it?

258
00:22:52,327 --> 00:22:55,000
To start with, they're hardly realistic,

259
00:22:58,047 --> 00:23:01,005
Could they provide the next clue in our mystery?

260
00:23:03,647 --> 00:23:09,119
After all, they were produced
by an organised society much more like ours,

261
00:23:09,287 --> 00:23:15,396
Could they explain why our world
is so filled with unrealistic images of the body?

262
00:23:17,047 --> 00:23:22,280
To find out, we need to discover
what's behind these distinctive images,

263
00:23:26,807 --> 00:23:30,641
It seems that
rather than exaggerating parts of the body,

264
00:23:30,807 --> 00:23:35,642
Egyptian artists chose to show each part
from its clearest angle,

265
00:23:39,687 --> 00:23:42,406
To understand exactly what that means,

266
00:23:42,567 --> 00:23:45,525
let's taKe the body parts one by one.

267
00:23:45,687 --> 00:23:49,680
Suppose they want to maKe a painting
or a wall carving of me.

268
00:23:49,847 --> 00:23:51,644
Starting with the chest

269
00:23:51,807 --> 00:23:56,244
they'd want to show that front on,
to emphasise its characteristic V shape.

270
00:23:56,407 --> 00:24:00,002
But my face would be seen more clearly in profile,

271
00:24:00,287 --> 00:24:02,039
like so,

272
00:24:02,207 --> 00:24:04,596
and to make the image less complicated

273
00:24:04,767 --> 00:24:06,997
they'd want me to be

274
00:24:07,167 --> 00:24:09,283
two-dimensional.

275
00:24:09,447 --> 00:24:11,358
But it doesn't stop there.

276
00:24:11,527 --> 00:24:14,280
Even though my chest is being shown front on,

277
00:24:14,447 --> 00:24:17,598
my arms can still be put together

278
00:24:17,767 --> 00:24:20,486
if it shows more clearly what they're doing.

279
00:24:20,647 --> 00:24:24,959
Showing the left hand is different
from the right hand was just unnecessary.

280
00:24:25,127 --> 00:24:29,245
They preferred to show them palms outwards

281
00:24:29,407 --> 00:24:33,320
and all the fingers are nice uniform length.

282
00:24:35,007 --> 00:24:38,886
What's more, seen from straight on,
legs and feet aren't very distinctive

283
00:24:39,047 --> 00:24:41,641
so they'd be shown sideways, too.

284
00:24:43,247 --> 00:24:46,000
Last, but not least, my head,

285
00:24:46,167 --> 00:24:52,606
because however clear my face might be in
profile, my eyes would be seen from straight on.

286
00:24:55,047 --> 00:24:59,757
I think we can safely say
that this is an unrealistic image of the body,

287
00:25:00,207 --> 00:25:04,166
but could the reason
the Egyptians created bodies like this

288
00:25:04,327 --> 00:25:07,558
explain the unrealistic images of today?

289
00:25:07,727 --> 00:25:13,723
To find out, I wanted to know if this was
just a style favoured by certain artists

290
00:25:13,887 --> 00:25:16,242
or something more significant,

291
00:25:16,407 --> 00:25:18,967
The answer couldn't have been clearer,

292
00:25:20,047 --> 00:25:21,799
TaKe this image here.

293
00:25:21,967 --> 00:25:25,880
It's got all the aspects
you saw me turn into earlier.

294
00:25:26,047 --> 00:25:28,766
Fix that in your mind, OK?

295
00:25:28,927 --> 00:25:31,441
Now come along with me.

296
00:25:34,167 --> 00:25:39,116
That image is found in the oldest part
of the great temple of Carnac,

297
00:25:43,847 --> 00:25:47,123
There are many impressive monuments in Egypt,

298
00:25:47,287 --> 00:25:50,245
but this place is truly awesome,

299
00:26:04,007 --> 00:26:06,316
Carnac wasn't built all at once,

300
00:26:06,487 --> 00:26:10,366
It was added to, bit by bit, by successive Pharaohs

301
00:26:10,527 --> 00:26:12,802
and generations of craftsmen,

302
00:26:15,127 --> 00:26:19,120
Walking through these columns
you walk through time,

303
00:26:19,287 --> 00:26:24,122
You can get lost
in hundreds of years of Egyptian history,

304
00:26:24,287 --> 00:26:30,556
which is why it's the perfect place to see
just how Egyptian art changed over time,

305
00:26:32,007 --> 00:26:35,477
The image of the body
I just asked you to fix in your head

306
00:26:35,647 --> 00:26:39,845
was carved in about 1900 B,C,

307
00:26:41,447 --> 00:26:46,077
Where I am now was built a full 700 years later.

308
00:26:46,247 --> 00:26:50,684
0ver 50 million Egyptians had lived and died

309
00:26:50,847 --> 00:26:53,600
and in all that period, just look,

310
00:26:53,767 --> 00:26:57,726
the way they depicted the human body
hasn't changed a bit.

311
00:27:05,087 --> 00:27:07,885
And that's just what you see here,

312
00:27:08,047 --> 00:27:12,563
But, in fact, the Egyptian style
didn't just last 700 years,

313
00:27:12,727 --> 00:27:15,241
it lasted 3,000

314
00:27:15,407 --> 00:27:22,040
and, in all that time, this was the only image
of the body that anyone ever saw,

315
00:27:27,087 --> 00:27:29,806
Just think of that happening today,

316
00:27:29,967 --> 00:27:35,758
TaKe, say, one of those Picasso paintings with
the arms and legs and eyes all over the place.

317
00:27:35,927 --> 00:27:41,320
Now imagine that was the only image
of the human body you ever saw

318
00:27:41,487 --> 00:27:43,443
throughout your life

319
00:27:43,607 --> 00:27:48,601
and then imagine it was the only image
of the human body your children saw

320
00:27:48,767 --> 00:27:53,522
and every generation up to the 41st century.

321
00:27:54,687 --> 00:27:58,600
Something powerful had made
the Egyptians preserve this style

322
00:27:58,767 --> 00:28:01,918
for an immense amount of time,

323
00:28:02,087 --> 00:28:03,964
But what was it?

324
00:28:04,127 --> 00:28:07,403
The answer to this lies back underground,

325
00:28:10,807 --> 00:28:14,846
Not far from Carnac
is the tomb of a priest called Ramose,

326
00:28:16,687 --> 00:28:18,723
Ramose was connected,

327
00:28:18,887 --> 00:28:22,118
His brother was chief artist to the Pharaoh,

328
00:28:22,287 --> 00:28:25,882
so before his death
work began on decorating his tomb

329
00:28:26,047 --> 00:28:28,607
with some exquisite paintings and reliefs,

330
00:28:31,207 --> 00:28:34,244
But before it was finished, the Pharaoh died,

331
00:28:34,407 --> 00:28:38,366
his brother lost the job and work ground to a halt,

332
00:28:38,527 --> 00:28:42,406
Bad news for Ramose, Good news for us,

333
00:28:42,567 --> 00:28:45,035
because on one of the unfinished walls

334
00:28:45,207 --> 00:28:48,358
archaeologists found some telltale signs,

335
00:28:48,527 --> 00:28:52,156
clues to why the Egyptian style never changed,

336
00:28:53,687 --> 00:28:56,440
Traced across the surface of the plaster

337
00:28:56,607 --> 00:29:00,486
are the fine red lines
of a grid that covers the entire body,

338
00:29:03,687 --> 00:29:08,124
They analysed this grid,
recording numerous details,

339
00:29:08,287 --> 00:29:11,040
The figure was 19 squares tall,

340
00:29:12,047 --> 00:29:14,880
the feet were two and a half squares long,

341
00:29:15,887 --> 00:29:19,846
the pupil of the eye
was one square off the centre-line,

342
00:29:21,727 --> 00:29:26,960
They then applied this same grid
to other images from all over Egypt,

343
00:29:27,127 --> 00:29:29,721
Sure enough, they fitted,

344
00:29:29,887 --> 00:29:34,438
This is why the style
remained unchanged for so long,

345
00:29:35,447 --> 00:29:39,838
Egyptian society clearly didn't want it to change,

346
00:29:40,007 --> 00:29:45,798
Their images were driven by
a shared obsession with consistency and order,

347
00:29:45,967 --> 00:29:48,606
precisely the cultural values

348
00:29:48,767 --> 00:29:52,237
on which the entire civilisation had been founded,

349
00:29:56,047 --> 00:29:59,926
And once you've seen this obsession
in their paintings of the body,

350
00:30:00,087 --> 00:30:02,760
you start to see it in everything they did,

351
00:30:06,087 --> 00:30:08,317
You see it in their buildings,

352
00:30:08,487 --> 00:30:10,398
The three pyramids at Giza

353
00:30:10,567 --> 00:30:14,196
contain enough stone to lay a wall around Spain,

354
00:30:15,247 --> 00:30:20,480
They're massive embodiments of the hierarchy
that ran from the Pharaoh downwards,

355
00:30:27,247 --> 00:30:30,796
Yet they were designed with absolute precision,

356
00:30:30,967 --> 00:30:34,482
symbols of the order
that had risen from the desert,

357
00:30:39,247 --> 00:30:45,117
And you can also see this obsession
with permanence and order in their statues,

358
00:30:45,287 --> 00:30:50,361
Like their buildings,
these were made on a simply astonishing scale,

359
00:31:12,567 --> 00:31:16,116
Where nomads had made statues
to carry around with them,

360
00:31:16,287 --> 00:31:20,246
the Egyptians weren't planning
on going anywhere,

361
00:31:20,407 --> 00:31:24,605
They wanted their images of the body
to last forever

362
00:31:24,767 --> 00:31:30,364
and they developed revolutionary quarrying
and masonry skills to do just that,

363
00:31:33,287 --> 00:31:35,881
Again, their obsession with order

364
00:31:36,047 --> 00:31:40,325
made these statues just as formal and rigid
as their paintings,

365
00:31:42,647 --> 00:31:45,480
The Egyptians created
images of the body this way

366
00:31:45,647 --> 00:31:49,799
not because of how their brains were hard-wired

367
00:31:49,967 --> 00:31:52,481
but because of their culture,

368
00:32:05,167 --> 00:32:06,680
(CAR H0RNS)

369
00:32:11,767 --> 00:32:16,522
Perhaps this could explain the images
that dominate our modern world,

370
00:32:20,807 --> 00:32:27,121
It could be that they all reflect or represent
a particular aspect of our culture,

371
00:32:36,527 --> 00:32:40,315
So, surely there's the answer to our mystery,

372
00:32:40,487 --> 00:32:42,921
culture is King.

373
00:32:43,087 --> 00:32:47,444
The society that we live in,
the values that we create for that society,

374
00:32:47,607 --> 00:32:52,158
these are what dictate
how we depict the human body.

375
00:32:52,327 --> 00:32:56,240
Well, actually, our story doesn't end there.

376
00:32:56,407 --> 00:33:00,605
(OPERATIC SINGING)

377
00:33:04,087 --> 00:33:08,319
In 1972, an Italian on vacation made a discovery

378
00:33:08,487 --> 00:33:13,880
which at first sight appeared to confirm
that culture is indeed king,

379
00:33:17,447 --> 00:33:21,156
That day, 16th August 1972,

380
00:33:21,327 --> 00:33:24,637
is the day that changed my life.

381
00:33:27,127 --> 00:33:31,325
(SPIVEY) On the last day of his summer holiday
on the south coast of Italy,

382
00:33:31,487 --> 00:33:35,116
Stefano Mariottini went spearfishing alone,

383
00:33:36,567 --> 00:33:39,001
(MARIOTTINI) I was looking from the surface

384
00:33:39,167 --> 00:33:42,603
when suddenly I,,,I saw a human arm,

385
00:33:46,767 --> 00:33:50,396
The first moment, I thought it was a corpse,

386
00:34:00,367 --> 00:34:06,317
When I went closer, then I recognised
that the material was bronze,

387
00:34:07,447 --> 00:34:12,475
(SPIVEY) Returning again and again
to the seabed, 30 feet below the surface,

388
00:34:12,647 --> 00:34:15,400
Stefano would gradually clear the sand

389
00:34:15,567 --> 00:34:19,765
to reveal the body
of an apparently realistic statue,

390
00:34:22,447 --> 00:34:26,281
(MARIOTTINI) I was astonished,
The face was wonderful,

391
00:34:29,047 --> 00:34:32,403
I wanted to continue to remove sand,

392
00:34:32,567 --> 00:34:35,320
I want to never finish,

393
00:34:35,487 --> 00:34:38,047
to see again those details

394
00:34:38,207 --> 00:34:41,995
so...so wonderful, so beautiful.

395
00:34:48,127 --> 00:34:52,643
(SPIVEY) In fact, over the next two hours
of exhausting diving and digging,

396
00:34:52,807 --> 00:34:57,642
Stefano went on to uncover
not one but two ancient statues,

397
00:35:04,087 --> 00:35:08,842
When brought to the surface they would
bring Stefano considerable financial reward,,,

398
00:35:11,487 --> 00:35:14,604
,,and they would also solve our mystery,

399
00:35:21,727 --> 00:35:27,723
They had been created by
one of the most influential cultures in history,

400
00:35:27,887 --> 00:35:30,685
They came from ancient Greece,

401
00:35:54,207 --> 00:35:57,085
Greece may seem a little different today,

402
00:35:57,247 --> 00:36:01,479
but 2,500 years ago
it had very particular cultural values,

403
00:36:02,447 --> 00:36:07,237
Ancient Greeks were preoccupied
with philosophy and mathematics,

404
00:36:07,407 --> 00:36:12,606
They believed in many different gods
and goddesses, but there was something else -

405
00:36:12,767 --> 00:36:18,558
something that in their culture was the equivalent
of Egypt's fixation with order and precision,

406
00:36:19,727 --> 00:36:23,197
Ancient Greeks were fixated with the body

407
00:36:23,367 --> 00:36:27,406
and they had very firm ideas
about what a body should look like,

408
00:36:31,047 --> 00:36:36,075
To the ancient GreeKs,
the perfect body was an athletic body.

409
00:36:36,247 --> 00:36:40,763
So men took an obsessive shameless pride
in their physiques,

410
00:36:40,927 --> 00:36:45,079
to an extent that would strike us today
as somewhat bizarre.

411
00:36:52,447 --> 00:36:56,645
Imagine if men today
behaved like they did in ancient Greece,

412
00:36:57,727 --> 00:37:01,766
They'd display their bodies
without hesitation or shame,

413
00:37:08,607 --> 00:37:11,565
If you had a fine torso

414
00:37:11,727 --> 00:37:13,718
you flaunted it,

415
00:37:18,087 --> 00:37:22,478
But back then
they had a special reason for all this,

416
00:37:22,647 --> 00:37:26,003
They believed their gods took human form

417
00:37:26,167 --> 00:37:28,237
and had beautiful bodies,

418
00:37:28,407 --> 00:37:31,479
So the more impressive you could make your own,

419
00:37:31,647 --> 00:37:34,445
the more like a god you were perceived to be,

420
00:37:36,967 --> 00:37:41,199
It really was the case
that if you looked good you were good,

421
00:37:46,207 --> 00:37:49,643
But the belief that gods took human form

422
00:37:49,807 --> 00:37:52,480
affected more than just their vanity,

423
00:37:54,127 --> 00:37:56,322
This cult of the body beautiful

424
00:37:56,487 --> 00:38:02,119
occupied the centre of life throughout
the Greek world, from here in Athens

425
00:38:03,127 --> 00:38:07,598
to here, Agrigento, on the coast of modern Sicily.

426
00:38:25,167 --> 00:38:29,922
Right across the Mediterranean,
wherever Greeks settled they built temples,

427
00:38:32,007 --> 00:38:36,683
And it was here their belief
that gods had human bodies was focused,

428
00:38:37,967 --> 00:38:42,643
Here, they wanted to see
images of their gods that were realistic,

429
00:38:46,727 --> 00:38:52,040
Greek worshippers would have come to a temple
liKe this not merely to contemplate their faith.

430
00:38:52,207 --> 00:38:55,677
They came
expecting to find their gods in residence,

431
00:38:55,847 --> 00:38:58,202
actually to meet them face to face.

432
00:38:58,367 --> 00:39:01,962
In order for that to happen, they needed statues.

433
00:39:04,927 --> 00:39:07,361
But there was a technical problem.

434
00:39:07,527 --> 00:39:11,315
Greek sculptors
were mostly confined to things like this,

435
00:39:11,487 --> 00:39:13,762
figurines on a small scale.

436
00:39:13,927 --> 00:39:16,680
As late as 700 B.C.,

437
00:39:16,847 --> 00:39:22,444
figurines were as close to lifelike and life-size
as the Greeks could get.

438
00:39:24,687 --> 00:39:27,724
And yet within just a few generations

439
00:39:27,887 --> 00:39:30,640
the Greeks would realise their dream,

440
00:39:41,167 --> 00:39:45,797
Temples like this would come to be filled
with wonderful large statues,

441
00:39:54,567 --> 00:39:57,400
And these statues would be so lifelike

442
00:39:57,567 --> 00:40:02,516
that Greek worshippers would believe
they actually were the gods in person,

443
00:40:03,527 --> 00:40:05,677
watching them in the temple,

444
00:40:05,847 --> 00:40:07,963
hearing their prayers,

445
00:40:11,327 --> 00:40:13,761
What's even more extraordinary

446
00:40:13,927 --> 00:40:18,443
is this transformation
from small figurine to living god

447
00:40:18,607 --> 00:40:22,725
happened in
an amazingly short period of time,

448
00:40:22,887 --> 00:40:26,846
In fact, it was the most rapid artistic revolution

449
00:40:27,007 --> 00:40:29,202
in the history of mankind,

450
00:40:30,967 --> 00:40:32,958
What happened?

451
00:40:33,127 --> 00:40:37,166
How was it that after several centuries of effort

452
00:40:37,327 --> 00:40:41,002
Greek sculptors
suddenly acquired the necessary skills

453
00:40:41,167 --> 00:40:44,603
to create lifesize, life-like images?

454
00:40:44,767 --> 00:40:49,397
Well, the answer to that
lies in a somewhat surprising place.

455
00:40:49,567 --> 00:40:52,206
I'll give you a clue. Shh.

456
00:41:03,247 --> 00:41:06,683
In the St John's College Library
at Cambridge University,

457
00:41:06,847 --> 00:41:09,805
there are over 32,000 books,

458
00:41:13,327 --> 00:41:17,161
Buried in the pages of one of them
is a small detail

459
00:41:17,327 --> 00:41:19,966
which at first glance seems almost irrelevant,

460
00:41:25,687 --> 00:41:30,397
This is an antique copy
of the world's oldest surviving history book

461
00:41:30,567 --> 00:41:33,206
by the great historian Herodotus.

462
00:41:33,367 --> 00:41:37,360
It's in ancient Greek and I was never
top of the class for ancient Greek

463
00:41:37,527 --> 00:41:39,722
but I'm gonna give it a go.

464
00:41:41,767 --> 00:41:45,646
The section we're interested in
covers Egyptian history,

465
00:41:50,647 --> 00:41:53,764
Here's the passage we're looking for.

466
00:41:53,927 --> 00:41:57,237
Here it talks about an Egyptian
called Psammeticus

467
00:41:57,407 --> 00:41:59,637
around the time of the 25th Dynasty.

468
00:41:59,807 --> 00:42:02,275
It's about 660 B.C.

469
00:42:02,447 --> 00:42:08,317
This Psammeticus, we're told,
swore to seize control of all of Egypt.

470
00:42:09,447 --> 00:42:14,726
Shortly after foreign soldiers
arrived on Egypt's shores.

471
00:42:16,127 --> 00:42:18,402
Psammeticus seized his chance.

472
00:42:18,567 --> 00:42:20,876
He hired these soldiers as mercenaries

473
00:42:21,047 --> 00:42:25,086
and with their help
soon won the throne of all Egypt.

474
00:42:25,247 --> 00:42:27,078
Well, good for him.

475
00:42:27,247 --> 00:42:31,479
What matters for us
is where these mercenaries came from,

476
00:42:31,647 --> 00:42:37,756
and it tells us here
that they came from Ionia and Caria,

477
00:42:37,927 --> 00:42:40,805
what we would Know as part of ancient Greece.

478
00:42:42,047 --> 00:42:45,403
This was enough to spark an artistic revolution,

479
00:42:51,087 --> 00:42:55,922
Up until now, Greece and Egypt
had been virtually isolated from each other,

480
00:42:56,967 --> 00:42:59,686
Now they began to trade as never before,

481
00:42:59,847 --> 00:43:02,281
exchanging ideas and know-how,

482
00:43:02,447 --> 00:43:07,123
The outstanding masonry skills
the Egyptians had developed for their statues

483
00:43:07,287 --> 00:43:09,278
crossed the Mediterranean,

484
00:43:09,447 --> 00:43:13,599
Now Greek artists
could put their tiny figurines behind them

485
00:43:13,767 --> 00:43:16,565
and create statues as tall as a man,

486
00:43:20,287 --> 00:43:24,075
But Egypt's rigid style
wasn't good enough for the Greeks,

487
00:43:25,607 --> 00:43:29,441
Their culture still demanded realistic statues,

488
00:43:33,247 --> 00:43:36,603
So they did something
that no artists had done before,

489
00:43:39,007 --> 00:43:41,123
They used their eyes,

490
00:43:45,047 --> 00:43:47,959
They studied every detail of the human body,

491
00:43:52,367 --> 00:43:57,282
Bit by bit, they strived to understand
exactly how to reproduce it in their art,

492
00:43:59,367 --> 00:44:03,804
Ears started to look like ears,
real torsos began to appear,

493
00:44:05,007 --> 00:44:07,805
each artist building on the progress of others,

494
00:44:09,767 --> 00:44:14,363
And this explosive period,
within just a few generations,

495
00:44:14,527 --> 00:44:19,476
produced what no civilisation on earth
had ever produced before,

496
00:44:27,367 --> 00:44:29,835
This is Kritian Boy

497
00:44:30,007 --> 00:44:32,760
and he's a milestone in the history of art,

498
00:44:43,007 --> 00:44:45,157
He's carved from marble

499
00:44:45,327 --> 00:44:49,240
and yet his skin appears to be taut over muscles,

500
00:44:49,407 --> 00:44:52,046
his thighs look like they're bearing weight,

501
00:44:53,047 --> 00:44:55,880
his back undulates over his spine,

502
00:44:56,047 --> 00:44:59,676
which curves down perfectly in a relaxed stance,

503
00:45:10,807 --> 00:45:15,961
Greek artists had created
precisely what their society had urged them to,

504
00:45:17,247 --> 00:45:20,603
a truly realistic human body,

505
00:45:25,887 --> 00:45:29,357
And yet this is the final clue in our story

506
00:45:29,527 --> 00:45:31,961
not because it's realistic

507
00:45:32,127 --> 00:45:36,200
but because of the effect
this realism had on the Greeks,

508
00:45:43,607 --> 00:45:49,318
This exquisite statue gives us
an absolutely historic moment.

509
00:45:49,487 --> 00:45:53,799
For the very first time
man creates an image of himself

510
00:45:53,967 --> 00:45:57,755
that's fully nude and truly lifelike.

511
00:45:57,927 --> 00:46:02,318
So, for the Greeks
this was like the pinnacle of artistic achievement.

512
00:46:02,487 --> 00:46:07,686
They'd reached their goal,
art as the perfect imitation of life.

513
00:46:07,847 --> 00:46:13,444
Now they could carry on
producing gorgeous statues liKe this forever.

514
00:46:13,607 --> 00:46:16,599
But that's just it, they didn't.

515
00:46:18,727 --> 00:46:23,960
Within a generation, the Greeks stopped
making realistic statues like this,

516
00:46:24,967 --> 00:46:26,798
But why?

517
00:46:26,967 --> 00:46:30,721
Why, when their culture
had made them strive for reality,

518
00:46:30,887 --> 00:46:33,799
did they almost immediately abandon it?

519
00:46:34,927 --> 00:46:39,682
The answer reveals something
fundamental about us as human beings,

520
00:46:39,847 --> 00:46:44,204
When it comes to images of the body,
we're driven not just by culture

521
00:46:44,367 --> 00:46:49,316
but also by something we thought
existed only in the earliest humans,

522
00:46:51,687 --> 00:46:55,396
It's that primeval instinct to exaggerate,

523
00:46:55,567 --> 00:47:00,880
as observed by Professor Ramachandran
in the Venus of Willendorf,

524
00:47:01,047 --> 00:47:06,405
The instinct, he argues, is hard-wired
into the brains of all humans,

525
00:47:06,567 --> 00:47:09,604
even if in some cultures it was suppressed,

526
00:47:13,087 --> 00:47:17,444
(RAMACHANDRAN) The principle of exaggeration
must be something that is hard-wired

527
00:47:17,607 --> 00:47:22,727
in the neural machinery of the visual pathways
in the brains of every human being,

528
00:47:22,887 --> 00:47:24,639
When you speak of universals,

529
00:47:24,807 --> 00:47:28,846
you have to realise that what's universal
is the propensity to do this,

530
00:47:29,007 --> 00:47:31,521
but this can be overridden by culture.

531
00:47:33,207 --> 00:47:35,084
If you look at Egyptian art,

532
00:47:35,247 --> 00:47:38,922
the pictures of anything
are highly rigid, highly schematic

533
00:47:39,087 --> 00:47:42,636
and they lacK the energy
and movement and vigour

534
00:47:42,807 --> 00:47:46,322
that you could convey
using the principle of exaggeration.

535
00:47:49,847 --> 00:47:55,843
(SPIVEY) Professor Ramachandran is convinced
that Greek culture now had the right ingredients

536
00:47:56,007 --> 00:47:58,840
to reawaken this ancient instinct

537
00:47:59,007 --> 00:48:03,159
and it was this that made them
reject the realism that they'd created,

538
00:48:04,607 --> 00:48:10,125
(RAMACHANDRAN) The problem with the Kritian
Boy is it was too realistic. That makes it boring,

539
00:48:10,287 --> 00:48:13,324
If art's about realism, why do you need art?

540
00:48:13,487 --> 00:48:15,717
They realised that this was boring,

541
00:48:15,887 --> 00:48:20,358
that they had to do interesting things
with the image, distort it in specific ways,

542
00:48:20,527 --> 00:48:23,405
not randomly distort it but lawfully distort it,

543
00:48:23,567 --> 00:48:26,957
to exaggerate the brain's
aesthetic response to that body.

544
00:48:31,087 --> 00:48:36,207
So the Greeks' dissatisfaction with reality
was perfectly natural.

545
00:48:36,367 --> 00:48:41,157
They couldn't know it,
but they were preprogrammed to want more.

546
00:48:41,327 --> 00:48:44,922
Like the nomads thousands of years before them,

547
00:48:45,087 --> 00:48:49,444
they were hankering
after something more human than human.

548
00:48:54,167 --> 00:48:56,203
The question now was,

549
00:48:56,367 --> 00:49:01,395
how could they adapt a real body
into something that would satisfy them,

550
00:49:01,887 --> 00:49:04,560
into statues worthy of their temples?

551
00:49:07,167 --> 00:49:12,400
The race was on, This was the new challenge
facing Greek artists,

552
00:49:15,087 --> 00:49:18,363
Merely exaggerating muscles wasn't enough,

553
00:49:18,527 --> 00:49:22,600
They had to discover their equivalent
of the red-striped stick,

554
00:49:23,607 --> 00:49:26,167
And in about 450 B,C,

555
00:49:26,327 --> 00:49:29,364
a sculptor and mathematician called Polyclitus

556
00:49:29,527 --> 00:49:33,406
made the breakthrough
that would help them achieve just that,

557
00:49:36,527 --> 00:49:41,555
Polyclitus wanted to find a way
of showing the physical potential of an athlete,

558
00:49:43,367 --> 00:49:45,961
He wanted a body that was both relaxed

559
00:49:46,127 --> 00:49:48,687
and yet appeared ready to move,

560
00:49:49,727 --> 00:49:52,719
He created a series of theoretical rods

561
00:49:52,887 --> 00:49:55,560
passing through key points of the body,

562
00:49:58,247 --> 00:50:01,398
He also divided the body down the centre

563
00:50:01,567 --> 00:50:03,717
and across the middle,

564
00:50:03,887 --> 00:50:06,321
With these four quarters marked out,

565
00:50:06,487 --> 00:50:09,559
he began to move his figure in specific ways,

566
00:50:11,527 --> 00:50:14,360
He bent one knee

567
00:50:14,527 --> 00:50:19,555
and moved the same foot to ensure
that it bore little or none of the body's weight,

568
00:50:23,167 --> 00:50:25,317
He bent one arm

569
00:50:25,487 --> 00:50:27,842
and left the other relaxed,

570
00:50:28,767 --> 00:50:34,444
He rotated the body so the hips and head
faced one way and the chest the other,

571
00:50:39,167 --> 00:50:43,001
Now the body was divided into clear quarters,

572
00:50:43,167 --> 00:50:46,364
top and bottom mirrored each other,

573
00:50:46,527 --> 00:50:50,361
One side in motion, the other at rest,

574
00:50:54,407 --> 00:50:57,399
The angles of the body which were once horizontal

575
00:50:57,567 --> 00:51:01,003
now opposed and also complemented each other,

576
00:51:03,327 --> 00:51:07,718
So Polyclitus captured
an athlete poised for action...

577
00:51:09,487 --> 00:51:11,318
..but for other artists

578
00:51:11,487 --> 00:51:17,562
it was also the key to understanding how
they could at last represent physical perfection,

579
00:51:19,647 --> 00:51:22,115
Everything had been leading to this,

580
00:51:22,287 --> 00:51:28,396
the moment when ancient Greece
created something more human than human,

581
00:51:33,367 --> 00:51:36,200
(SOPRANO SINGS)

582
00:52:11,967 --> 00:52:15,403
They are known as the Riace bronzes,

583
00:52:15,567 --> 00:52:19,003
They are what Stefano Mariottini
found on the seabed,

584
00:52:22,647 --> 00:52:26,356
Now displayed in Reggio
on the southernmost tip of Italy,

585
00:52:26,527 --> 00:52:29,485
they're relatively unknown to the world at large,

586
00:52:32,607 --> 00:52:35,121
And yet I am not alone in believing

587
00:52:35,287 --> 00:52:37,926
that nowhere on earth can you see sculpture

588
00:52:38,087 --> 00:52:40,726
as astounding as this,

589
00:52:43,087 --> 00:52:47,365
I have seen a lot of statues in my time
and from all over the world,

590
00:52:47,527 --> 00:52:53,796
but nothing, nothing quite matches these
in terms of skill and execution.

591
00:52:53,967 --> 00:52:59,121
I'm not one to gush, but if you pressed me
I'd have to come out with it.

592
00:52:59,287 --> 00:53:04,315
That these are absolutely
the best statues ever made.

593
00:53:08,327 --> 00:53:11,683
As many modern sculptors
are embarrassed to admit,

594
00:53:11,847 --> 00:53:15,840
this quality of craftsmanship,
the subtlety of detail,

595
00:53:16,007 --> 00:53:18,521
is impossible to achieve today,

596
00:53:20,967 --> 00:53:26,758
It is genuinely hard to believe that these were
made not just before the Italian Renaissance

597
00:53:26,927 --> 00:53:29,236
but 2,000 years before,

598
00:53:31,327 --> 00:53:34,000
Inspired by the rules of Polyclitus,

599
00:53:34,167 --> 00:53:39,878
the arrangement of the limbs, the direction
of the head and chest make them seem alive,

600
00:53:40,887 --> 00:53:42,639
At first glance

601
00:53:42,807 --> 00:53:49,246
they appear to be as realistic a representation
of the human body as you could hope to find,

602
00:53:50,487 --> 00:53:56,005
But then, when you look again, you realise
that there's something not quite right.

603
00:53:56,167 --> 00:53:59,716
Yes, it resembles a human being, very much so,

604
00:53:59,887 --> 00:54:05,564
but, in fact, it's not anatomically possible
for a man, however athletic,

605
00:54:05,727 --> 00:54:07,763
to look like this.

606
00:54:10,407 --> 00:54:15,083
Polyclitus did indeed want to divide
the sections of the body clearly

607
00:54:15,247 --> 00:54:18,159
but here it's been taken to extremes,

608
00:54:18,327 --> 00:54:20,397
The division between top and bottom

609
00:54:20,567 --> 00:54:24,526
has been exaggerated
by a crest of muscle across the waist

610
00:54:24,687 --> 00:54:28,600
that's more defined
than it ever could be on a real human,

611
00:54:31,887 --> 00:54:38,076
The legs have been made artificially long
to match perfectly the length of the upper body,

612
00:54:39,687 --> 00:54:43,441
To stress the symmetry
and separation of the two sides,

613
00:54:43,607 --> 00:54:48,476
there's an implausibly deep groove
running up the centre of the chest,

614
00:54:54,367 --> 00:54:57,803
And while the chest muscles are totally relaxed,

615
00:54:57,967 --> 00:55:02,961
the muscles on the back are tense
and impossibly well defined,

616
00:55:03,127 --> 00:55:08,155
The central channel of the spine is deeper
than you'd ever see on a real human

617
00:55:08,327 --> 00:55:10,318
and to improve the line of their back

618
00:55:10,487 --> 00:55:14,924
these men had no coccyx bone
at the base of their spine,

619
00:55:16,847 --> 00:55:19,680
These are unrealistic bodies,

620
00:55:19,847 --> 00:55:22,486
reality's been exaggerated

621
00:55:22,647 --> 00:55:26,196
and that's why they're so overwhelming,

622
00:55:29,327 --> 00:55:33,798
The instinct to do this had been alive
in the brains of early humans

623
00:55:33,967 --> 00:55:36,401
and had now been revived,

624
00:55:36,567 --> 00:55:43,439
The first civilisation capable of realism
had used exaggeration to go further

625
00:55:43,607 --> 00:55:48,965
and it's that instinct
which still dominates our world today,

626
00:55:54,887 --> 00:55:57,401
This is the answer to our mystery.

627
00:55:57,567 --> 00:56:02,880
This is why the bodies in our modern world
looK the way they do.

628
00:56:03,047 --> 00:56:06,562
The reality is we humans don't like reality.

629
00:56:07,607 --> 00:56:12,886
The shared biological instinct
to prefer carefully exaggerated images

630
00:56:13,047 --> 00:56:17,882
links us inexorably with our ancient ancestors,

631
00:56:18,047 --> 00:56:23,440
and yet what we choose to exaggerate
is whether science gets left behind.

632
00:56:24,807 --> 00:56:27,241
That's where the magic comes in,

633
00:56:28,847 --> 00:56:31,805
The ancient Greeks
cared about physical perfection,

634
00:56:31,967 --> 00:56:34,117
So did Michelangelo,

635
00:56:34,287 --> 00:56:38,883
He too created unrealistic bodies
that were more than human,

636
00:56:40,367 --> 00:56:42,517
As cultural values changed,

637
00:56:42,687 --> 00:56:47,078
what artists chose to exaggerate
about the body changed, too.

638
00:56:50,567 --> 00:56:55,800
The Impressionists exaggerated
light and colour rather than shape,

639
00:56:55,967 --> 00:56:58,561
to express more than realism ever could,

640
00:57:01,847 --> 00:57:05,044
As modern society
became more culturally diverse,

641
00:57:05,207 --> 00:57:07,767
what we exaggerated changed further,

642
00:57:11,447 --> 00:57:14,803
And the instinct is still alive today,

643
00:57:16,327 --> 00:57:19,046
The art of caricature is fuelled by it,

644
00:57:19,207 --> 00:57:22,961
It's what draws us to the extremes of human form,

645
00:57:24,967 --> 00:57:30,883
Catwalk models possess what
our minds register as impossible proportions,

646
00:57:32,567 --> 00:57:35,400
Clothing and marketing images do the same,

647
00:57:35,567 --> 00:57:40,925
capture us by exaggerating qualities
that we regard as important,

648
00:57:41,327 --> 00:57:44,842
And in the digital age we feed this desire,

649
00:57:45,007 --> 00:57:51,480
exaggerating shapes and removing features that
in earlier societies were themselves exaggerated,

650
00:57:54,967 --> 00:57:57,435
In our own cults of the body beautiful

651
00:57:57,607 --> 00:57:59,677
we even do it to ourselves,

652
00:57:59,847 --> 00:58:06,366
spending billions exaggerating
those features we regard as attractive,

653
00:58:10,687 --> 00:58:12,279
The world changes

654
00:58:12,447 --> 00:58:18,079
and in time we may, as the Egyptians did,
suppress this desire to exaggerate,

655
00:58:19,087 --> 00:58:23,797
but until then, we'll continue
what our ancient ancestors began

656
00:58:23,967 --> 00:58:26,720
30,000 years ago..