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The color "blue" didn't exist for ancient cultures
- Thread starter DiipuSurotu
- Start date
This entire episode is almost topic on topic very similar to the Podcast Radiolab episode of blue. Goes exactly from Homer to, other civilizations, color order, the Himbia people. The only difference is that Radiolab explains much better why the sky and ocean would not be considered blue.
Well, techinically speaking,
Only Ancient Egypt? Don't think I buy that.
There's also these and the terracotta warrior from the warring state period.
Would the black blue/white and gold dress have produced the same results to them then as it did to us today?
Seems legit. I mean its only through my girlfriend that i became civilized enough to know what salmon pink or cerulean blue is.
There we go.
They couldn't see blue? Lol, that's so stu...
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh
There we go.
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They couldn't see blue? Lol, that's so stu...
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooh
lol. In all honesty, that's an incredibly sexist picture no?
But in any case, it's the need for classifcation that drives color separation. If you are say an interior decorator/ graphics designer, or follow street wear releases you will learn a lot more color names because they start to matter. That does not mean other people cant see the difference, just that its less important to separate them.
This topic sounds should be related to something about the collective unconscious. I didn't knew about green-blue difference in Japan and could be a interesting case of study.
Yup, there are plenty of blue insects birds and fish so this has more to do with language than perception
"What does the weather look like today?"
"Hmm looks pretty white today, but I don't like the look of those white bits"
"Maybe it will whiten up a bit later. I don't know, the future seems a bit cloudy..."
"Wait, what word did you just use? Cloudy... clouds? Oh shit I can see them now! Oh and the rest of the sky is a completely different colour, I'll never be so blue again!"
In Turkish it's literally called the White Sea (as opposed to the Black Sea)
Well, China has the yellow river and the birth place of Chinese civilication
I had to take a closer look at this. I could spot the odd one out in the greens but only after looking at them for a long time and even then I was not at all confident - it looked to have slightly greater contrast but if I looked around the other squares kinda did, too, until I came back tot hat one. I couldn't pick it with any real confidence. Asked my son to pick the odd one and he launched at it instantly. I have deuteranomoly though.
Had to check the RBG values for the squares. The odd one was 87,170,1 and the others 72, 166, 7, so the odd one has ever so slightly less red and blue and more green.
Neither are French, German, Spanish or Italian. I'd be curious to learn which ones are.
literally the first line of the history section:
this is exactly what the video in the OP is about, it just has a stupid clickbaity title. of course blue "existed", but in many ancient cultures it was not categorized the same way most languages do now.
You don't even have to go to ancient times to find examples of colours being categorized differently. A good example of this is the European robin pictured below. It is known as redbreast (or robin redbreast) in several European languages. Of course the bird was named before there was a word for colour orange, so it was considered red.
there's both black and blue in the second painting, so I don't think anyone both as the same color, otherwise they wouldn't have used two different shades of paint.
Here's a really interesting history of pigments over the ages. In the earliest days of human history, there were no blue pigments.
It's a bit tough to view on mobile, but you can click or tap on any of the bars / colors and get a description of what that pigment is, what it's made of, when/where it was used, some example art, etc... For example, here are the two earliest blues, Egyptian Blue and Azurite.
It's a bit tough to view on mobile, but you can click or tap on any of the bars / colors and get a description of what that pigment is, what it's made of, when/where it was used, some example art, etc... For example, here are the two earliest blues, Egyptian Blue and Azurite.
Anybody can look at the sky and recognise blue is different from white.
Ancient civilizations still had human eyes.
Ancient civilizations still had human eyes.
Few things that are pointed out that people are misunderstanding.
A lot of our named colors are just hues or shades of other primary colors. We've decided to pinpoint them out. By pinpointing them out we've established them and as such, we notice them more clearly. By calling a specific shade of Red "Pink" we are now more easily able to identify Pink instead of just calling it "light red".
So with regard to ancient cultures - while they did see blue (obviously), they since it didn't make up any sort of important part of their lives--as in their world didn't didn't have a lot of blue things outside of the sky and the ocean, they had no reason to name it. So instead it was simply a shade of a different color and as such didn't have any importance.
A lot of our named colors are just hues or shades of other primary colors. We've decided to pinpoint them out. By pinpointing them out we've established them and as such, we notice them more clearly. By calling a specific shade of Red "Pink" we are now more easily able to identify Pink instead of just calling it "light red".
So with regard to ancient cultures - while they did see blue (obviously), they since it didn't make up any sort of important part of their lives--as in their world didn't didn't have a lot of blue things outside of the sky and the ocean, they had no reason to name it. So instead it was simply a shade of a different color and as such didn't have any importance.
Is this saying we cannot spot the green square right away? Because I knew it was the second one clockwise instantly.
No, it means that modern people have a harder time distinguishing it. Not that we couldn't all together. Just like in the original test, some of the individuals correctly found the blue square but some got it wrong.
Mediterranean cultures had a concept of blue they see it in nature
Also lapis lazuli was a semi precious stone imported from Afghanistan and decorated the royal palaces of the Persian empire and would surely have made its way west to the Greeks.
It was simply a rare color for decoration
Also lapis lazuli was a semi precious stone imported from Afghanistan and decorated the royal palaces of the Persian empire and would surely have made its way west to the Greeks.
It was simply a rare color for decoration
To add to my post above the Greeks and ancient peoples would have been aware of the Ishtar Gate in Babylonia
en.wikipedia.org
Alexander the Great most certainly paraded through it to enter Babylon in his conquest of Persia
Ishtar Gate - Wikipedia
Alexander the Great most certainly paraded through it to enter Babylon in his conquest of Persia
People freak out about a "wine dark sea" but you point out the famous quote from Neuromancer "The sky above the port was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel" and surely it must be obvious what is happening to anyone over 20 or so?
There is literally an article on wiki for the distinction in languages of blue/green. East Asia, especially languages center around Chinese does not have words exclusively for Green and Blue till recently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue–green_distinction_in_language