History of Contortion

Contortionism is an extremely remarkable art form but has it always been as extreme as the examples we can find today on the Internet?

Here I tried to answer the question "How far people could bend backwards throughout the mankind's history?"

I chose backbends for the simple reason that frontbends and splits seem to be even more obscure, I literally couldn't find a single depiction of splits or frontbends in the ancient art anywhere... It almost seems like people learned how to sit in the split only after photography was invented XD

Anyway, I tried to use the most flexible examples I could find for each time period, but of course many achievements in the world have never been documented, so...