Paleoanthropsychobiological is a term that Ellen Dissanayake coined which is built from a number of root words. Paleo meaning old; anthro which means human; psych as in mind; and biological which is the study of life. So all of these roots together would literally be defined as the study of the old human mind and life. But in Dissanayake’s definition, she explains that,“First, that the idea of art encompasses all of human history; second, that it include all human societies; and third, that it accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects” (1). The author uses this term to describe the idea of art, as said in the quote.

Dissanayake goes by the phrase, “making special” when relating personal significance to specific activities or things. This relates to art because art itself is a creation made from personal creativity, which makes things special by its uniqueness. For example, art can come from a variety of different things like by baking and decorating a cake. It could just be an ordinary cake, but you can ‘make it special’ by using your own creativity to make it an original work of art. Her phrase also has to do with human survival because “looking at all humans as members of one species and then thinking of art as a “kind of behavior that developed as they evolved, to help them survive” (2). The uniqueness and specialty of human survival is based off of evolution, as art evolves, human survival does as well through innovation.

The author identifies many different periods of art throughout European history. Three different theories of art that Dissanayake mentions in her essay include the Renaissance, which was the art of the 14^th century, the Modernism which was in the 18^th century, and the Postmodernism of the 20^th century. First off, the Renaissance was an era where “replace God-centered with man-centered”. Basically, they just focused on aesthetics of man. Next was the Modernism period when art was referred as an ideology and “disinterested” art. This was when art became more abstract, “taste and beauty that govern all the arts and indeed make them not simply painting or status, but examples of fine art” (3). This allowed many views to see art individually. Lastly, there was the Postmodernism, and this is defined as broad art, where interpretation was based on perspectives and artists “interprets art according to their invididual and cultural sensibilities” (6). This era most importantly ceased “high” art standards of the modernists.