# No "Blue" in the ancient world? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 1, 2016, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653 "2016-09-01T13:39:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/61 "2016-09-02T17:26:52Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > According to Cecil, [orange became orange because of oranges.](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/307/what-came-first-orange-or-oranges) But according to that cite, carrots became orange because of (Dutch) patriotism. Patriotism involved Orangeness because of William of Orange. William became Orange because of a mispronunciation of a place name that sounded like “orange”. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/62 "2016-09-02T17:31:12Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > William became Orange because of a mispronunciation of a place name that sounded like “orange”. There’s a Trump joke to be made here but it’s not going to be by me. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/63 "2016-09-02T17:54:15Z")
Well, they had to call it \*something \*when they went to Dick Blick. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/64 "2016-09-02T18:45:53Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > The word for green in Japanese is “midori”. But it’s a relatively recent word, in the past the word “ao” meant both blue and green. … Even now, what we in the western world would consider to be green doesn’t quite match up to the Japanese concept of it. Actually, “ao” still means both blue and green. The green light on a traffic light has always been referred as “ao”. Green vegetables and green (unripe) fruits are referred to as “ao.” Japanese word for “caterpillar” is “ao mushi.” ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/65 "2016-09-02T19:35:28Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > The fact that the sky is blue doesn’t mean one needs a word for blue. Think about someone per-civilized\* person in central Europe, on a savanna in Africa, central Asia, etc. > > How many blue-like-the-sky things are there that are important enough that there’s a need for a color name? A. There has to be several such things. B. The common color of such things is important enough to talk about. > > - Once civilization kicks in and people starting making a _bunch_ of dyed/colored stuff, then color naming takes off. To me, ancient Rome, ancient Egypt, etc., aren’t ancient enough for this topic. > [@BigT](#): > > The argument I heard on Radiolab was that you only bother having a name for a color if you can make that color. Egyptians did have a way to make blue, so they had a name for it. Most other cultures around that time did not. … > > … Finally, I’ll note two other things from [the Radiolab podcast](http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/). There is that tribe that they actually showed green and blue color swatches and found they had trouble telling them apart (but could more easily distinguish shades of green). … So synthesizing from a variety of posts and links … 1. Cultures develop more color words when a greater variety of color concepts and distinctions have greater salience to them, such when they develop a dye for the color, as happened with “blue” in both Egyptian and Mayan cultures. Such generally happens with greater technologic development. “Blue” is not a discrimination of much importance in less technologically advanced civilization. But maybe that does not quite fly because [“Egyptian Blue”](http://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-technology/egyptian-blue-oldest-artificial-pigment-ever-produced-001745) was known and used in Ancient Greece: “Egyptian Blue has been found in numerous Greek and Roman objects, including statues from the Parthenon in Athens and wall paintings in Pompeii.” Maybe just not important enough. 2. The degree (if any) that cultural salience impacted color discrimination ability is not so settled. Cecil cites an 1880 study that demonstrated that there was an ability to discriminate between colors in members of cultures without the word color distinctions but that means little unless we know the samples used. The study referenced in several cites including above seems more meaningful: blue/green discrimination was difficult for members of a hunter-gatherer tribe yet discrimination between shades of green that look pretty identical to me was no problem. I see this as the same thing that occurs with discrimination of phonemes. There are sounds in other languages that I cannot tell the difference between and I am not alone. It is a real physical difference. Unless you learn to make the distinction early on you likely never will be able to, at least within the context of speech. Salience to that discrimination early on changes the brain wiring. The Japanese /r/ - /l/ example is most famous perhaps but it occurs and has been studies in [other languages](http://www.pnas.org/content/105/42/16083.full.pdf) as well. Apparently there are more studies that support that the Whorf hypothesis, that language impacts perception, is, at least in regard to color, [somewhat correct](http://www1.icsi.berkeley.edu/~kay/tics2.pdf). > [@](#): > > Does language affect perception? As noted above, several > studies suggest that the answer is ‘yes’, at least in connection > with color. These studies have shown that there is > ‘categorical perception’ (CP: faster or more accurate discrimination > of stimuli that straddle a category boundary) > for color, and that differences in color category boundaries > between languages predict where CP will occur [2–7]. > Moreover, several of these studies, and others [e.g. 8] have > shown that color CP disappears with a concurrent verbal > interference task, confirming that color CP is language > based. > However, this straightforward Whorfian answer - and > the yes-or-no framing of the very question ‘does language > affect perception?’ - obscure an interesting possibility: that > language might affect half of perception. Specifically, > language might be expected to shape perception primarily > in the right visual field (RVF), and much less if at all in the > left visual field (LVF). This expectation follows from the > observations that the left hemisphere (LH) of the brain is > dominant for language, and that the visual fields project > contralaterally to the brain. On this view, half of our > perceptual world might be viewed through the lens of > our native language, and half viewed without such a > linguistic filter. Infants seem to start off with some [prelinguistic color categorization.](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4780595/) > [@](#): > > Humans can discriminate thousands of colors among continuous color space. However, we use only a handful of color terms to describe colors in our daily communication. From the analyses of data for the World Color Survey (www1.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/wcs/), a corpus of color-naming data from 110 universal languages, many studies have revealed that particular structures of color terms used by speakers exist, and that these structures possess some common features (1, 2). Furthermore, these common features had been found even in the color perception of infants before the acquisition of the color terms (3–5). These results imply that categorical color perception may have some biological basis across cultures and languages. On the other hand, one argument for categorical color perception is that the color lexicon changes perceptual differences among colors so that colors from the same linguistic category appear much closer than colors of different categories (6, 7). A possible hypothesis is that categorical color perception has an innate perceptual foundation, and then could be modified along with the acquisition of language (8). … > > … Although evidence has suggested that prelinguistic infants hold categorical color perception, no prior study has identified how the categorical relationship of color is encoded in infants, and whether it is lateralized to a hemisphere. In the present study, we address this question by using a functional brain activity imaging technique, near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), to investigate the neural activity related to categorical color perception, along with behavioral experiments. A hierarchy of color-information processing has been demonstrated by several physiological studies in monkeys (18, 19) and humans (20), starting from the occipital to the temporal cortex through the ventral visual areas. Thus, we recorded responses of bilateral occipitotemporal (OT) regions in an attempt to obtain responses to categorical color differences; responses in occipital regions were also recorded to compare responses to a lower level visual feature. The results of the present study suggest the presence of some categorical color representation in the OT regions in infants, which appears to be achieved independent of or before the acquisition of language, and which is probably not driven by mere perceptual color differences. … > > The origin and nature of color categories have been concerns of researchers from a range of disciplines for many decades. There is converging behavioral evidence for categorical responses to color in prelinguistic infants (3, 4). Furthermore, it has been reported that a chimpanzee could classify Munsell samples into several categories in a similar way to humans (38). The results of the present study imply that colors in different categories are differently represented in the visual cortex of 5- to 7-mo-old infants. Our findings support the hypothesis that categorical color perception does not necessarily originate from language. > > A recent study that applied cluster analysis (39) to the data of the World Color Survey (www1.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU/wcs/), a corpus of color-naming data from 110 unwritten languages, revealed that the particular structure of color terms used by each language is drawn on a set of about three to six universal color-naming systems. Notably, the results of that study suggested that the pattern of categorization for colors between blue and green could be classified into about four types of “motifs” that are common across various mother languages, original habitations, and cultural backgrounds. On the other hand, there are several other studies in anthropology, cognitive science, and linguistics fields that argue the acquisition of color terms can modify the perceptual border of color categories, such that the same color would be categorized into different categories by different language speakers (40–42). Taken together, \*\*it seems that “some categorical color distinctions apparently exist prior to language, and then may be reinforced, modulated, or eliminated by learning a particular language,” as was suggested in a previous study \*\*(8). Bolding mine. And made blue, well just because. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/66 "2016-09-02T20:00:45Z")
Another interesting point about the radio show — When they went to a group with no word for “blue” and asked what color the sky was, there was an interesting progression of responses. Going from memory, they included— 1. You mean the sun? No. You mean the clouds? No. Then what are you talking about? There’s nothing up there in the direction you’re pointing. 2. It has no color. 3. It’s white. Over time they found that they could introduce the concept of “blue” and that people could gradually learn to recognize it. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2016, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/67 "2016-09-02T20:20:06Z")
Blue was a sacred color worn by Jewish high priest. Tekhelet > **[Tekhelet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet)** > > Tekhelet (Hebrew: תְּכֵלֶת təḵēleṯ; alternate spellings include tekheleth, t'chelet, techelet and techeiles) is a "blue-violet", "blue", or "turquoise" dye highly prized by ancient Mediterranean civilizations. In the Hebrew Bible and Jewish tradition, it was used in the clothing of the High Priest, the tapestries in the Tabernacle, and the tzitzit (fringes) affixed to the corners of one's four-cornered garments, including the tallit. Tekhelet is most notably mentioned in the third par Neither the... ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/68 "2016-09-03T15:21:08Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > In the context of the developing English Language, it is interesting (but may just be coincidence) that there were not many orange things to talk about. England has only a couple of native orange-coloured flowers and no native orange-coloured edible fruits. Lots of orange rocks and orange autumnal leaves, though. Of course, both of those were characterised as “red” ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/69 "2016-09-03T15:36:32Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Another interesting point about the radio show — > > When they went to a group with no word for “blue” and asked what color the sky was, there was an interesting progression of responses. Going from memory, they included— > > 1. You mean the sun? No. You mean the clouds? No. Then what are you talking about? There’s nothing up there in the direction you’re pointing. > > 2. It has no color. > > 3. It’s white. > > Over time they found that they could introduce the concept of “blue” and that people could gradually learn to recognize it. This honestly sounds like more of a semantic/communication issue than a lack of a designation for one of the strongest hues in a primitive person’s world. (Fine, they thought it was green or dark or light or ooglawackian, and didn’t get "blue.) But they were Sooooooo Primitive (How Primitive Were They?) that they didn’t “see” the sky? I’m having trouble with that one. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/70 "2016-09-03T15:37:09Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > consider that Japan has been inhabited by a single, evolving culture for around 15,000 years. That’s not true. There’s a clear cultural discontinuity between the Jomon and Yayoi periods, indicating the influx of at least one, possibly two, mainland agricultural cultures. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/71 "2016-09-03T15:39:13Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > That’s not true. There’s a clear cultural discontinuity between the Jomon and Yayoi periods, indicating the influx of at least one, possibly two, mainland agricultural cultures. That’s the deeply ingrained Japanese “superior race” belief claiming the unbroken cultural history. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/72 "2016-09-03T18:04:09Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > This honestly sounds like more of a semantic/communication issue than a lack of a designation for one of the strongest hues in a primitive person’s world. (Fine, they thought it was green or dark or light or ooglawackian, and didn’t get "blue.) But they were Sooooooo Primitive (How Primitive Were They?) that they didn’t “see” the sky? I’m having trouble with that one. This has nothing to do with being “primitive.” It has to do with how people of a certain group interact with the world around them. If the sky is not a “thing” but rather just the absence of things, then it’s perfectly logical. If I point to a space in the air two feet in front of your nose and ask you what color “that” is, what would you say? As for “one of the strongest hues in a primitive person’s world,” the whole point of interest in color names is that there is no natural border between one hue and another. Yes, it is partially semantics, but the point about color terms is that there are several factors here, including: (1) The environment and culture influence the need for specific color terms (2) The color terms in a language affect human perception of whether two colors are variations of the same color or are different colors (3) More generally, language interacts with thoughts and perceptions. Our eyes don’t “see” absolutely everything in our environment, but only what our brains have been taught are things to be seen. It’s a kind of feedback loop. And there’s no reason why it’s unbelievable that certain light shades of blue might cross over into “white” territory for a particular language/social group. It’s not that if you put a sky blue swatch and a paper white swatch next each other that they won’t be able to see a difference. It’s that the two might just be considered variations of a single overarching color, the same way that some greys, greens, and blues are under the same umbrella in the Welsh language. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/73 "2016-09-03T18:25:35Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > On the same clickbait meme level, I see stuff about how Greek/Roman statues were painted with lots of bright vivid colors, including blue. That’s what always bugs me about Hollywood depictions of Ancient Rome and Greece, all the statues having no color at all as if that’s how they originally looked. The BBC series on Rome was the only one I recall getting it right. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/74 "2016-09-03T18:32:19Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Blue was a sacred color worn by Jewish high priest. Tekhelet > > [Tekhelet - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tekhelet) I believe that the Odyssey and the Iliad predate the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/75 "2016-09-03T18:36:52Z")
Ah, I misremembered. It wasn’t a social group. It was the researcher’s own daughter. So “primitiveness” really has nothing to do with it. > **[No one could describe the color 'blue' until modern times](https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2)** > > Is the sky really blue? Or do you just think it is because you know it is? > [@](#): > > In fact, one researcher that Radiolab spoke with — Guy Deutscher, author of “Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages,” tried a casual experiment with that. In theory, one of children’s first questions is, “Why is the sky blue?” So he raised his daughter while being careful to never describe the color of the sky to her, and then one day asked her what color she saw when she looked up. > > Alma, Deutscher’s daughter, had no idea. The sky was colorless. Eventually she decided it was white, and later on, eventually blue. So blue was not the first thing she saw or gravitated toward, though it is where she settled in the end. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/76 "2016-09-03T18:40:46Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I believe that the Odyssey and the Iliad predate the Bible. And also this: > **[Clarkesworld Magazine - Science Fiction & Fantasy](https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/)** > > Clarkesworld Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine and Podcast. This page: The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World by Erin Hoffman > [@](#): > > The color “blue” appears not once in the New Testament, and its appearance in the Torah is questioned (there are two words argued to be types of blue, sappir and tekeleth, but the latter appears to be arguably purple, and neither color is used, for instance, to describe the sky). ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/77 "2016-09-03T19:16:44Z")
I liked the section where they talked about curing color-blindness. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/78 "2016-09-03T19:54:47Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > This has nothing to do with being “primitive.” It has to do with how people of a certain group interact with the world around them. If the sky is not a “thing” but rather just the absence of things, then it’s perfectly logical. If I point to a space in the air two feet in front of your nose and ask you what color “that” is, what would you say? No idea, when one of us lacks the word for “the space two feet in front of your nose.” As I am questioning whether the interviewer knew how to communicate “sky” to the people he was investigating. That the confusion may not have been over a color designator, but over the object being (mis)designated. The only reason “primitive” comes into it is because a culture living far more in the outdoors and dependent on weather and climate would certainly have SOME designation for the vastness above them that produced rain and wind and warmth and light. I suggest it’s more likely that the interviewer didn’t know the designation than that the people/s didn’t have a color word for it. God knows the interlinguistic record is full of such lacunae and ridiculous fallout therefrom. ---
**Author:** ![Biffster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biffster/32/339_2.png) [@Biffster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffster)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/79 "2016-09-03T20:22:04Z")
Have you ever noticed that there’s no blue foods? Even blueberries are purple. – George Carlin Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2016, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653/80 "2016-09-03T20:41:00Z")
> [@Biffster](#): > > Have you ever noticed that there’s no blue foods? Even blueberries are purple. > – George Carlin And violets are violet, not blue. But I had a bright blue raspberry sno-cone last week, so it’s just not true. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-blue-in-the-ancient-world/764653.md?page=5)