Perhaps the most iconic Greek artform today, life-sized marble statues began to appear in Greece around the early 6th century B.C. Research on the site originally began in the 1980s, and marble chips and unfinished statues scattered throughout the area sparked suspicions about the presence of a workshop. Likewise, the copious amount of marble waste and semi-finished marble statues confirm earlier suspicions about the sculpture workshop. The statues were rigid, and often standing up straight with neutral facial expressions—this is a far cry from the soft, airy Greek statues we most associate with the ancient culture. By 500 B.C., Greek sculptors began imitating the world around them, and glorifying the sensual human form.