Art aesthetics definition

ART AND HUMAN REALITY

[DENIS DUTTON:] What we regard as the modern human personality evolved during the Pleistocene, between million and 10, years ago.

If you encountered one of your direct ancestors from the beginning of the Pleistocene moseying down the street today, you would probably call the SPCA and ask for a crew with tranquilizer darts and nets to cart the beast off to the zoo.

If you saw somebody from the end of the Pleistocene, 10, years ago, you'd call the Immigration & Naturalization Service—by that time our ancestors wouldn't have appeared much different from any of us today. It is that crucial period, those 80, generations of the Pleistocene before the modern period, which is the key to understanding the evolution of human psychology.

Features of life that makes us most human—language, religion, charm, seduction, social status-seeking, and the arts—came to be in this period, no doubt especially in the last , years.

The human personality