Why are humans depicted in paintings from ancient civilizations like different than now? Weren’t there artists who could paint realistic paintings?

Question

Weren’t there artists at that time who could draw humans for what they actually looked like. For instance, look at the paintings of kings from the 17th Century or before.

In: Other

Answer 1

A lot of comments here have art theory and history well covered,
but what occurs to me is different and I think may be what most non-artists think of: The basic goal of replicating a form faithfully.
This requires no creativity, rather the theory is and always was, to simply copy proportions as they are observable, as accurately as possible. It’s hard to imagine that nobody was trying to do this before the Renaissance.