Chapter 2 summarizes and discusses the ways in which the human form was rendered and displayed at a monumental scale throughout Mesoamerica during the Early and Middle Preclassic periods, and how it was used to encode social difference and status. It also identifies the sculptural innovations that transpired during this era, which included the development of norms for articulating what it meant to be human, as well as the implementation of complex narrative compositions, many of which incorporated references to the larger world of objects and people.