Investigating the Invisible Color that Ancient People Couldn’t See

a reply to: fenian8

Well done.. People just pull # together and make stupid claims. Humans couldn't see bllue.. Dear me..

a reply to: toms54

AS a fan of the picts and the celts, it is mentioned in writings of Ceaser and various other Roman generals who came to Britain that they wore their skin covered in Blue from Woad that was around 55BC

Blue pigment primarily derived from Lapis lazuli or Cyanides from plants so im sure there were plenty of people who could see it ! maybe some of these famous writers were tritaneropes meaning they cant see the colour as blue properly

see this link for a wee diagram
Accessibility - Colour Blindness


this wee interesting part about the difference between blue and green in welsh / scots gaelic
apparently the jury is still on the fence about gaelic/ welsh being a proto indo european language

blue / green

a reply to: UMayBRite!

this is also related to in hamelts mill and the secret history of the world , consciousness evolves
it went from the "voice of the god , or the voice of the dead king,"

to "my voice " , my own internal dialogue

originally posted by: Skid Mark
a reply to: toms54
So...what? What color did they see the sky as?

yeah that's what I keep thinking, what ever "color word" they thought the sky and water were, that's what it was to them....geez

a reply to: sapien82

I liked your links especially the one for blue / green. I thought the Scots came from Scythians but I'm no kind of expert.

a reply to: toms54

Aye there are many stories about the Scota coming from the Scythians , but there are also tales of those people coming from the tuatha de dannan to Ireland then going to Egypt or vice versa !
Im not sure if we know , whether or not the british isles in particular the outer hebrides were inhabited before the last ice age and these settlements having a "proto-indo european" language which was then abandoned when the picts were amalgamated into the Scota tribes

Certainly interesting, there is definitely a lot going on there we just simply dont know about

Either we just didnt have the word for blue yet , or it was more commonly known as something else , or these dudes were tritaneropes !

Still very interesting to think that something so colourful and everywhere would not have its own word in ancient origins

a reply to: sapien82

Can't say. One thing I do know from all I've read lately, there seems to be an explosion of archeological interest going on over there. With all the new stuff coming out, maybe we'll learn something. Of course, if you live there, maybe it's not all new to you but fascinating for the rest of us. It certainly has a lot of history for a place at the ends of the earth back then.

I'm not familiar with ancient languages but could this be due something like how a word in Mandarin Chinese can often have many different meanings, based only on pronunciation? Perhaps some of these color words were used interchangeably.

For example (not color-words but, I think illustrates my idea):

shī - lion
shí - ten
shĭ - history
shì - to be

mā - mommy
má - bother
mă - horse
mà - to scold

tāng - soup
táng - candy
tăng - to lie down
tàng - to scald

I imagine words translated from ancient texts over centuries could easily lose these nuances.

Interesting thread, thank you!

a reply to: toms54

Aye I am lucky enough to live on a part of the world with a deep history going as far back as the early neolithic / ice age
possibly even further.

During the summer there , due to droughts, the archaeological society announced the discovery of many more sites in England , Ireland and Scotland , as the drought had shown up previously hidden structures in fields etc!

and there is more data to go through which will take about 100 years and thats just the data, its a gold mine of new discoveries waiting to happen.

My fiance' and I plan to spend next year going to all of these old sites in scotland !

I want to visit Dundarn the Pict capital at one point a large hill for next to loch leven
and situated on a volcanic plug, these old sites all seem to be near or on top off volcanic plugs!
Something to do with ley lines !

Volcanoes were important to ancient peoples , all that earth energy to be tapped into

Reminds me of Lateralus by Tool...
Black
Then
White are
All I see
In my infancy
Red and yellow then came to be
Reaching out to me
Lets me see......

a reply to: toms54

Maybe this guy's song is about falling down this rabbit hole?

originally posted by: Force10Guy
Reminds me of Lateralus by Tool...
Black
Then
White are
All I see
In my infancy
Red and yellow then came to be
Reaching out to me
Lets me see......

Hey! Good call!

I don't think it's a matter of not being able to see the color but simply not defining the color we say is blue with a word that didn't also denote what we call something else like dark green or grey or just the word dark. We have different blues today that some call Navy or Midnight, Colbalt, Ultramarine or Curulean but others would call Dark Blue, light blue, purple, grey, or green-blue.

English in particular has many words that have begun separating into more particular definitions that even a few years ago was more broadly used to define different things.

Think about the word pink. The word in English now denotes the color sort of between purple and red. But pink was given this color because it was the color of the flower known as Pinks which was named Pinks not because of the color but because they were Pinked. Meaning they were flowers with scalloped (pinked) edges. There are white Pinks Flowers but the color white wasn't used to connote what we call Pink today.

In fact, during the 17th century before the color Pink became what we see as Pink today there was a Dutch term Pink which was a greenish yellow color that artists used all the time. This color is now called Dutch Pink by most English speaking artists.

We also have Fuchsia which is a color named after a flower that was named after a botanist. The color was later renamed Magenta but today many would claim Magenta and Fuchsia are two different colors. It isn't as if we couldn't see this reddish purple it was just that we didn't tend to break it down with a specific word.

Language is fascinating that way.

a reply to: Identified

When I was young, color was defined by what was in a box of crayolas.

a reply to: toms54

Yep.

But then we'll just be doing exactly what BigFatFurryTexan brought up in a very valid point.

Explain zero with no knowledge of zero. It's not that they have no knowledge of the idea of nothing, zero isn't nothing it's ultimately much more complex.

Since blue is just a colour, a colour that can vary a lot. We might find they have multiple words for it or non at all.

I bet they could provide a sample of blue though, the colour won't be invisible per say, just not well defined within their vocabulary. I could equally say since they don't have knowledge of mathematics then there's absolutely no way they could count... They go hunting and always lose members, make arrows with multiple heads,have twins and one starves because they look the same etc etc. An absurd notion really.

Yeah... Chasing our tails

a reply to: Identified

Well made point. Explained much better than my attempts.

Language evolves and becomes more complex, we look at the past and become confused because our analysis is based on present knowledge and not the mindset of the day.

a reply to: RAY1990

When you say "Language evolves and becomes more complex" aren't you right there " become confused because our analysis is based on present knowledge and not the mindset of the day?" If that were true, all languages would be equally evolved. Traditional societies could have languages that don't really evolve much. If life stays the same for hundreds or a thousand years, why would you need new words?

a reply to: toms54

Language evolution tends to be based on other evolution within the society, I'm far from a linguistic although I recall traditionalists/ Classicalists in France having been debated on such things around and after the French revolution.

Many figured any change to their language would degrade the culture.

On the opposite hand look at the evolution of the English language. Each ideal is marred with issues. Colours are a prime example of that, influences of those we interacted with.

The thing is life never remains "static" for any culture, even the most isolated will experience change, for change is the law of life, right? Nothing is static... Though I'm getting into philosophical thought now.

Language whether oral or literal is subject to change with every new experience.

If life stays the same for hundreds or a thousand years, why would you need new words?

It's a good enough point, it goes against the ambitions of humans I'd like to think. Those that don't go forth, like for instance the Vikings, they tend to die out or be killed. As it happens I live 20 minutes from a Viking named town, their language affected mine heavily. To drive home a point the Bretons were well aware of individual days, the timing of the planet etc.

Yet today, days are named after Gods. We evolve, adapt, adopt. To not do so usually leaves us to the history books.

a reply to: toms54

Maybe the ancient legends are from a time when we lived on another planet? Or maybe earth conditions were different?

This site has always been interesting to me saturndeathcult.com...
And the extended theory to this, the Ganymede Hypothesis is also pretty interesting.

a reply to: toms54

I have a hard time believing in the Jules Davidoff Namibian experiment. I'm not saying I don't believe it. Im having a hard time believing it though. It just seems made up. I guess maybe I've been burned one too many times by amazing stories about remote tribes. *shrug*