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1. The Paleolithic era marks the beginning of artistic representation. Early humans carved and modeled stone and clay relief sculpture, and made mural paintings deep within their cave shelters. Paleolithic artists also created portable full-round sculptures from bone and stone

Paleolithic images address the themes that affected human survival, such as fertility and animal populations. Faceless female figures, for example, display exaggerated breasts and genitals to emphasize their fecundity. The few Paleolithic male figures have animal heads, but their meaning has yet to be determined. Positive and negative handprints and other abstract signs also testify to the human presence. Most Paleolithic art, however, represents animals, although the exact meaning of these creatures is unknown.

Painted Paleolithic humans and animals are represented primarily in profile, but the artists’ approach is descriptive rather than strictly optical. In addition to revealing the artists’ familiarity with and observation of the animals, the images show all of the essential visual information required to identify the creatures. For example, most painters employed twisted perspective to join a profile head and frontal horns. The paintings exhibit no attempt to compose animals into groups or narratives, or to show them in a shared space or from a single viewpoint.

2 .The ancient near East consisted of five notable civilizations: the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, and the Persians. It's a well known fact that this, for lack of a better term, is where everything basically began. Writing, cities, organized religion and government, law, and even the wheel just to name a few of the Near East's achievements. It's difficult to argue the fact that this ancient civilization gave the world, and humanity, more then any other

Innovations to sculpture also arose greatly. Comparing prehistoric life and Near Eastern life again, humans were not the central focus in prehistoric art. But more often then not, humans were depicted in Near Eastern art. Remembering Venus of Willendorf, prehistoric art exposed the human body with exaggerated sexual organs and no shame in nudity. Near Eastern sculptures were more likely to portray clothed humans with great anatomical precision. On top of that, prehistoric people were travelers, nomadic groups unable to carry heavy, over sized objects with them. But as the people of the Near East civilized and settled into land, the larger and grander the sculpture, the greater the sign of permanence

Near Eastern art began a new tradition with painting as well. Representation of animals with human like body parts and emotions began emerging everywhere. The Sumerians began the tradition with the Lyre. It was continued by the Egyptian Sphinx  and the Greek Minotaur

2.Ancient Egyptian art is five thousand years old. It emerged and took shape in the ancient Egypt, the civilization of the Nile Valley. Expressed in paintings and sculptures, it was highly symbolic and fascinating - this art form revolves round the past and was intended to keep history alive.

In a narrow sense, Ancient Egyptian art refers to the canonical 2D and 3D art developed in Egypt from 3000 BC and used until the 3rd century. It is to be noted that most elements of Egyptian art remained remarkably stable over the 3000 year period that represents the ancient civilization without strong outside influence. The same basic conventions and quality of observation started at a high level and remained near that level over the period.

Ancient Egyptian art forms are characterized by regularity and detailed depiction of human beings and the nature, and, were intended to provide company to the deceased in the 'other world'. Artists' endeavored to preserve everything of the present time as clearly and permanently as possible. Completeness took precedence over prettiness. Some art forms present an extraordinarily vivid representation of the time and the life, as the ancient Egyptian life was lived thousand of years before.

Egyptian art in all forms obeyed one law: the mode of representing man, nature and the environment remained almost the same for thousands of years and the most admired artists were those who replicated most admired  styles  of the past.

3. The  Aegean  age (ca. 3000-1200 BC) featured three major cultures:  Cycladic ,  Minoan , and  Mycenaean . The Minoan and Mycenaean cultures (which were much larger than the Cycladic culture) are responsible for most Aegean artistic production. The chief exception lies in the Pre-Palace age (ca. 3000-2000 BC), during which the Cycladianswere the most accomplished sculptors of the Aegean.

All Aegean cultures worked mainly in small sculpture (e.g. figurines, vessels). Large-scale sculpture (e.g. statues, architectural sculpture) only became common in Europe under the ancient Greeks, who drew inspiration from the great sculpted works of Egypt and Mesopotamia

Aegean art hardly shows the human face en face in painting except on the representation of beads of the jewel fresco and humans in a more diversified manner.

4Art historians generally define Ancient Greek art as the art produced in the Greek-speaking world from about 1000 BC to about 100 BC. They generally exclude the art of the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations, which  flourished  from about 1500 to about 1200 BC. Despite the fact that these were Greek-speaking cultures, there is little or no continuity between the art of these civilizations and later Greek art.

At the other end of the time-scale, art historians generally hold that Ancient Greek art as a distinct culture ended with the establishment of Roman rule over the Greek-speaking world in about 100 BC.

After this date they argue, Greco-Roman art, though often impressive in scale, was largely derivative of earlier Greek models, and declined steadily in quality until the advent of Christianity brought the classical tradition to an end in the 5th century AD.

There is also a question relating to the word "art" in Ancient Greece.

And in this period, human figures, usually representing the gods or the heroes of Greek history and mythology.