Art history is the study of the expressions of social values and personal ideas through the arts. It spans the entirety of human experience, from the earliest traces of the arts in Paleolithic times, to the global variety of arts in contemporary times. Art history engages the student in the search for what unites peoples across time and space, and what makes each culture, each civilization, unique. By looking at the efforts of past artists, whether in architecture, painting, crafts, ceramics, photography, sculpture, calligraphy, or other forms, we see the ways in which our own desires to express social concerns, feelings, and beliefs share the shapes and purposes of the past.