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The History of Sculpture

mid-200s bce , to spread the religion around India. As Hinduism became more important, more statues of Hindu gods and goddesses appeared. Buddhist art also made its way into China. In one place called the Longmen Grottoes, caves contain thousands statues of Buddhas and Buddhists. A recent study that tried to count them all came up with 142,289. China has a long history of sculpture, from ceramic pottery to tombs complete with thousands of statues. The tomb of Shi Huangdi con- tains more than six thousand terracotta life-size soldiers standing guard Hundreds of large and small Pacific islands make up the region we call Oceania. People on these islands have been creating sculptures for thousands of years, just like people everywhere else in the world. Early sculptures from Oceania included artistic baskets. Later on, sculptors began to create wooden carvings. Wooden sculptures adorned masks, boats, and bowls. The island of New Guinea in particular has a long sculpture tradi- tion. Early stone sculptures of figures are common there, and so are decorated mortars and pestles, which are used to crush and grind food. The mortars and pestles are carved into reliefs, and have bird or human heads on them. On Easter Island, huge stone sculptures called moai stand looking inland to the island. They represent different chiefs of the people who lived on Easter Island. People today still can’t quite figure out how the stones were carved and transported to their sites, because they’re so large and weigh so much. It’s a mystery! MODERN For most of sculpture’s history, artists had created figures of gods, peo- ple, or animals. Modern sculptors were interested in moving beyond over the king. OCEANIA