Were people in the past really this jacked?

by Rampow12

Saw this on the front page: https://reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/l5daga/medusa_and_perseus_by_doc_zenith/

Most statues from antiquity/renaissance show incredibly athletic-looking people. Were humans more jacked back then?

Iphikrates

I think you may be under the misapprehension that this is an ancient statue. In fact it is an artwork first published this year (2021). It reflects modern western ideas of physical beauty. The male figure corresponds reasonably well to the Ancient Greek ideal (though he is more muscled than they tended to prefer). The female figure is in no way representative of the Ancient Greek ideal, and immediately gives this image away as a modern creation.

As to the question how ripped the Ancient Greeks really got, I wrote about this here. We always have to bear in mind that their statues (just like this modern artwork) reflect ideals, not reality. While it was perfectly possible for people to look like this, ordinary people would not have looked like this, just like ordinary people today do not look like the figures in the image you shared.