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The art of our species

If Neanderthal man created any form of art, no traces of it have yet been found. But with the arrival of modern man, or Homo sapiens sapiens, the human genius for image-making becomes abundantly clear.

In the recesses of caves, people begin to decorate the rock face with an important theme in their daily lives, the bison and reindeer which are their prey as Ice Age hunters. And sculptors carve portable images of another predominant interest of mankind - the swelling curves of the female form, emphasizing the fertility on which the survival of the tribe depends.

Perhaps the most famous of early sculptures is the so-called Venus of Willendorf. Found at Willendorf in Austria, and dating from more than 25,000 years ago, she is only about four inches high. More than 100 fertility figures of this kind have been found in an area reaching from France to southern Russia.

The sculptor of the Willendorf Venus, scraping away with a flint tool at his fragment of limestone, is not engaging in what we would call art. His tiny but profoundly convincing fertility goddess is a religious object. An encampment of mammoth hunters at Gagarino, in the Ukraine, has yielded many such figures. The huts of the Gagarino hunters even have niches in the walls, or little shrines, to accomodate them.

The Egyptian style: from 3100 BC

The first civilization to establish a recognizable artistic style is Egypt. This style follows a strange but remarkably consistent convention, by which the feet, legs and head of each human figure are shown in profile but the torso, shoulders, arms and eye are depicted as if from the front.

By this means, it has to be admitted, the artist is able to tackle each separate feature from the easiest angle. It is a convenient convention, and it is used both in paintings and in low-relief sculptures. Often the two are combined, with paint applied to the lightly sculpted figures.

The Egyptian style can be seen fully fledged in one of the earliest sculptures to survive - a relief, on a slate slab, which the pharaoh Narmer commissions in about 3100 BC to celebrate a victory.

The king holds his defeated enemy by the hair and threatens to strike him. The smaller figure on the left carries the king's sandals. He is smaller not because he is further away, but because he is inferior. Egyptian perspective is essentially hierarchical.

Figures in the round: 3rd - 2nd millennium BC

Some time after 3000 BC it becomes the practice in Egypt for seated statues of royal people and distinguished officials to be placed in their tombs. Prince Rahotep and his wife Nofret are entombed in about 2500 BC. He has held a high government post and Nofret, apparently a favourite with the pharaoh, also had an official position in the palace.

Their painted images and their glittering eyes of quartz are so realistic that the people who eventually unearth them - in 1871 - are reported to have fled in terror.

More humble figures are also placed in Egyptian royal tombs, to provide familiar services in the next world. They often have an astonishingly life-like quality. Women kneel to grind corn for the royal bread. Among the male servants a scribe is a regular attendant.

These scribes provide a fascinating insight into the clerical methods of the time. Seated with crossed legs, the writer's brief skirt is stretched tight between his thighs. On this surface he rests his papyrus, holding the rolled up part of the scroll in his left hand. His right hand, with pen between finger and thumb, is poised to jot down the next instruction.

The sphinx: c.2500 BC

The most colossal sculpture of the ancient world is the Egyptian sphinx. The great lion with a human face is carved from the centre of a limestone quarry, after the