Programme One - More Human Than Human...
One image dominates our contemporary world above all others: the human body. How Art Made the World travels from the modern world of advertising to the temples of classical Greece and the tombs of ancient Egypt to solve the mystery of why humans surround themselves with images of the body that are so unrealistic.

Programme Two - The Day Pictures Were Born
The discovery of prehistoric cave paintings in the last century led to the shocking realisation that humans have been creating art for over 30,000 years. Episode two reveals how the very first pictures ever made were created, and how images may have triggered the greatest change in human history.

Programme Three - The Art of Persuasion
The visual devices used by Tony Blair and George Bush to get themselves elected and maintain power, come not from modern times, but a world that is thousands of years old. How Art Made the World ventures back to the creation of Stonehenge and the reign of Alexander the Great to reveal how imagery became an indispensable weapon in every leader's political armoury.

Programme Four - Once Upon a Time
Each year over seven billion people across the world are drawn to see the latest feature films in the cinema. This episode reveals how the most powerful storytelling medium ever created exploits visual techniques invented by artists in the ancient world.

Programme Five - To Death and Back
Today in the 21st Century people see fewer real dead bodies than at any time in history. Yet in the modern world we seem almost obsessed with images of death. In an investigation encompassing ancient Jericho, Aztec America, and classical Italy, How Art Made the World discovers what it is that has compelled human beings to surround themselves with images of death for thousands of years.

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Suggested Reading

More Human Than Human...

Greek Art
Nigel Spivey

Gli Eroi Venuti dal Mare (Heroes from the Sea
The Photographic Record of the Riace Bronzes) - edited by Satriani & Paoletti

The Day Pictures Were Born

The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
David Lewis-Williams

The Shamans of Prehistory: Trance and Magic in the Painted Caves
Jean Clottes, David Lewis-Williams

Chauvet Cave: The Discovery of the World's Oldest Paintings
Jean-Marie Chauvet, Eliette Brunel Deschamps, Christian Hilaire, Jean Clottes, Paul G. Bahn

Return to Chauvet Cave: Excavating the Birthplace of Art - The First Full Report
Jean Clottes Thames and Hudson Ltd

Cave of Lascaux
Mario Ruspoli, Yves Coppens

Cambridge Illustrated History of Archaeology (Cambridge Illustrated Histories)
Lord Renfrew

After the Ice, A Global Human History 20,000 - 5000BC
Steven Mithen

The Art of Persuasion

The Image of Augustus
Susan Walker & Andrew Burnett

The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus
Paul Zanker

Conquest and Empire: Reign of Alexander the Great
A.B. Bosworth

From Cyrus to Alexander
Pierre Briant

Once Upon a Time

Mesopotamia
Julian Reade

Assyrian Scuplture
Julian Reade

Ancient Near Eastern Art
D. Collon

Translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh
Andrew George

Hadrian's column of Trajan
Amanda Claridge

Narrative and Event in Ancient Art
Peter J. Holliday

Pictorial Narrative in Antiquity and the Middle Ages
Studies in the History of Art 16 (1985)

Contemporary Aboriginal Art
S. McCulloch

To Death and Back

Digging Up Jericho
Kathleen Kenyon

The Archaeology of Death And Burial
Mike Parker Pearson

Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History
Sybille Haynes

City of Sacrifice: Violence From The Aztec Empire to the Modern Americas
David Carrasco

The Denial of Death
Ernest Becker, 2000

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