Ellen Dissanayake coined the term Paleoanthropsychbiological in her article “Art for Life’s Sake”. Ellen uses this term to describe her idea about art for life sake. She basically derives this term to explain a specific view about art and it is defined as an idea about art that “encompasses all of human history”, “include all human societies”, and “ that is accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects” (Dissanayake, 15).

Basically Dissanayake states everything that made the Homo erectus that caused them to move a step forward to civilization was special. This include from the very beginning the instinct or the alertness to a possible danger and the special behavior to plan ahead for such danger. Other example provided of “Make Special” that were provided by Dissanayake included the coloring of utensils and bodies, the decoration of tooth and the participating in rictual. Thus, she claims that though this process of “make special” weren’t artistic the end result was always artistic as it took some amount of dedication and hard effort by the person involved in the process as she states ”although “behavior made special” need not to be aesthetic or artistic, when one exerts control, takes pains, and uses care and contrivance to do one’s best, the result is generally what is called artistic or aesthetic” (Dissanayake, 15).

The three different theories of art that were discussed by Dissanayake are the modern theory: art as ideology, postmodern theory: Art as interpretation and the Paleoanthrophychbiological theory: art for life’s sake. The modern theory of art was developed in the early 18^th century and lasted till the early 20^th century, this theory basically considered that art is universal and stated that viewers of such art need an “disinterested” view to appreciate any art. Art in this era had become an ideology were only “few had the leisure and the education to acquire them” (Dissanayake, 15). The second era of art is the postmodern era, which basically gained its roots in the late 20^th century. This theory of art states that art is not universal as every one interpret art according to their own standards and thoughts and thus do not take in to account the standard or thoughts of the maker as the author states that “ one can appreciate work from alien cultures is an imperialistic act of appropriation – modeling them to one owns standards while blatantly dismissing or ignoring the standards of their makers and users” (Dissanayake, 15). Finally, Dissanayake defines art in her terms as art for life’s sake in which she states art is a universal need and thus have a species centered view. In this view of art Dissanayake states that “art combines modernism’ s proclamation that art is of supreme value and source for heightened personal experience with postmodernism’ s insistence that it belongs to everyone and is potentially all around us. It does this by thinking of art making and experiencing as a human behavior” (Dissanayake, 15). Furthermore, she claims that this behavior is practiced in a propensity of “making special” of human behavior; whose end result is always artistic.