Well, Cecil, in re your answer, it should be patently obvious to even the most casual observer that all of the plates, paintings of all kinds and other ancient ceramic ware certainly express very complicated color value. 'Nuff said. Bill Anderson.
Hi Bill,
Would you please reference the article for this comment?
Jois
Oh, I’m gonna keep using these #%@&* codes 'til I get 'em right.
hUDUn7
Hi Jois, I read “Ancient Man Only Sees 3 Colors” in Straight Dope Book Two. The whole question struck me as absurd. The contention that members of advanced or complex cultures were capable of seeing more than 3 colors, while their simpler or more primitive peers or ancesters were not, seemed to me to be a baseless and entireley obvious falsehood. How anyone observing the detritus and remains of any culture can ignore the obvious brightly polychromatic collections of ritual paraphenalia, both of natural and manufactured origin, is beyond me. Bill
Bill Anderson is undoubtedly referencing Could early man only see three colors?.
Unfortunately, his memory of the column seems faulty. Unca Cecil, the All-Knowing and All-Wise, comes down firmly on the side believing that early man (and contemporary, but relatively unsophisticated, man), was perfectly capable of seeing all colors. What early, etc., man lacked was a language capable of expressing these perceptions.
We note from the column that Geiger’s references included contemporary and near-contemporary references limited to longwave colors. It’s probably a lot easier to ask for the blue paint that it is to ask for “some of that hue…ummm, we don’t have a word for it, but you kinda know what I mean…don’t you?”
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
[snip]
What early, etc., man lacked was a language capable of expressing these perceptions.
It’s probably a lot easier to ask for the blue paint that it is to ask for “some of that hue…ummm, we don’t have a word for it, but you kinda know what I mean…don’t you?”
[/snip]
But it IS pretty easy to say “Hey, pass me the sky-colored paint.” (Unless you live in Seattle)
My point being that complete human languages are always capable of expressing human needs.
Adria writes:
But, as Berlin and Kay point out, human languages are not always complete.
(The question also has to be asked: “Complete from whose perspective?” Does the average hunter-gatherer need words for “red”, “green”, and “blue”? Probably not. Even if she does, she can probably get by by saying “blood-colored”, “leaf-colored”, and “sky-colored”. Over millenia, these may be worn down into single words (as some prepositions have been in some Indo-European languages), but not in a lifetime, or even several lifetimes).
“I don’t just want you to feel envy. I want you to suffer, I want you to bleed, I want you to die a little bit each day. And I want you to thank me for it.” – What “Let’s just be friends” really means
Thank you! That is interesting and reminds me of some grade school class - we read that Eskimos had some fantastically large number of words for snow while we only have 5-6.
Words, if you need 'em, you invent 'em, if you don’t, you don’t.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley