Why do not people see the color blue until recently
A Life / / December 19, 2019
More recently in human history, such color, as blue, simply did not exist. There is no word that defines the color, in such ancient languages like Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew. Not only that, there is no word, there is evidence that ancient people did not see this color at all.
How do we know that blue is not enough?
It all started with the ancient works. In the "Odyssey," Homer compares the color of the sea with the color of dark wine, but why not mention the blue or green?
In 1858, scientist William Gladstone (William Gladstone) remarked that it was not the only strange color description in this work. Homer also describes the details of clothing, weapons, armor, facial features, animals and colors, which he assigns a lot of things, very strange. For example, iron and sheep violet, green and honey.
Gladstone has decided to calculate how much time there is mention of colors in the "Odyssey." Black about 200 times, about 100 white, red 15 times, and the yellow and green at least 10 times.
Then he began to study the works of other Greek and noticed an interesting pattern: never mentions blue. There is not even a hint of it. A feeling that the Greeks lived in a dark and murky world, devoid of bright colors. There were only white, black and metal color with a few splashes of red and yellow.
Gladstone assumed it was some kind of a common trait inherent only to the Greeks, but a philologist Lazarus Geiger (Lazarus Geiger) continued his work and came to the conclusion that this is also true for other ancient cultures.
He studied the Icelandic sagas, the Koran, the ancient Chinese history and the Hebrew version of the Bible. For example, he wrote about the Hindu Vedic hymns:
Lazarus GeigerThese hymns are composed of more than 10 thousand lines, where a lot of times we have a description of heaven. Hardly anything is described more frequently than the heavens. Sun, sunset, night and day, storm clouds and lightning and much more. But there is one thing that can not be learned from these descriptions. This is what the sky is blue.
In ancient times, it was not blue, it is no different from the green and dark shades.
Geiger then began to dig further and find out when the same appeared blue. And revealed another interesting pattern. In every language were first definition for dark and light shades, etc. appeared word "red" - the color of blood and wine, and only then yellow and green. And in the end, after many years, finally appeared blue.
The only ancient culture, which differ in the color blue - Egyptian. The Egyptians even had blue paint.
If so think about it, the blue color is not so much in nature. There are, of course, the sky. But is it really blue? As we can see from the works of GM, even the holy scriptures, which often describe the heavens, not necessarily see it as such.
One researcher, Guy Deutscher (Guy Deutscher), author of the book "Through the mirror language", conducted an interesting experiment. He knew that one of the first questions asked by many children, is "Why is the sky blue?". So he raised a daughter, while being careful not to describe her color of the sky, and one day said to her, asking what color she sees when she looks up at the sky.
She could not answer. The sky was for her first colorless. It further agreed that it is white. It was only after a while came to the conclusion that it is blue.
The blue color was not the first for her, which she saw. He was the last.
Can people see colors, which does not yet have a definition?
The answer to this question is difficult to give, because we did not know what was going on in the mind of Homer, when he described the wine dark sea of color and purple sheep. But we know that the ancient Greeks and representatives of other ancient cultures had the same biological structure and the ability to perceive color as we do.
But whether or not you can see that which does not yet have descriptions?
Davidoff scientist Julie (Jules Davidoff) specially went to Namibia to find this out. There he conducted an experiment in a local Himba tribe, who speak the language, where there is no definition of the color blue, and there is no difference between blue and green.
He showed them a circle with 11 green squares and one blue. Members of the tribe are not able to show which of them is different.
But the Himba have left more words that describe green color than we do. When they looked at the circle of green squares, where a slightly different shade, they immediately pointed at him.
And you can?
For most of us it's hard.
Here it is, another square.
Julie Davidoff concluded that without the word that defines the color, with no way to identify it, it is very difficult to notice any difference, although our eyes perceive them physically.
So, before the blue color became the norm, people could see it, but did not understand what they are seeing.
It turns out that the new colors are gradually emerging in our world. Not actually (they already exist in nature), just with the passage of time people develop the ability to see and distinguish between them.
I wonder if you now see something that others do not yet see? And is it really something there?