The Benaki Museum on Wednesday inaugurated an exhibition organized in cooperation with the University of Crete tracing the origins of stone sculpture and showcasing artifacts from Europe, Africa and the Middle East that are being shown to the Greek public for the first time.

With the oldest exhibit dating back 2.5 million years, the exhibition explores how humans evolved from using stone as a rudimentary tool to developing more sophisticated esthetic criteria and endowing it with ornamentation.

The exhibition is based on “First Sculpture: Handaxe to Figure Stone,” organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center, in Dallas, Texas, in 2018.