Ancient languages didn't have a word for blue — not Greek, not Chinese, not Japanese, not Hebrew.
In the Odyssey, Homer famously describes the "wine-dark sea." But never "blue." William Gladstone, a scholar who later became the Prime Minister of Great Britain, noticed that this wasn't the only strange color description. Though the poet spends page after page describing the intricate details of clothing, armor, weaponry, facial features, animals, and more, his references to color are strange. Iron and sheep are violet, honey is green.
So Gladstone decided to count the color references in the book. And while black is mentioned almost 200 times and white around 100, other colors are rare. Red is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10. Gladstone started looking at other ancient Greek texts, and noticed the same thing — there was never anything described as "blue." The word didn't even exist.
Perhaps a colorless world.
A philologist, Lazarus Geiger looked to see when "blue" started to appear in languages and found an odd pattern all over the world.
Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a color to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the color of blood and wine.
After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colors to appear in every language is blue.
The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.
From the interesting observation comes the wacko thesis: If you do not have a word for something, do you see it? This chicken-egg worry might be worth an academic chair.
But eyes are blue. And the sky is blue.
And Homer was blind.
In the Odyssey, Homer famously describes the "wine-dark sea." But never "blue." William Gladstone, a scholar who later became the Prime Minister of Great Britain, noticed that this wasn't the only strange color description. Though the poet spends page after page describing the intricate details of clothing, armor, weaponry, facial features, animals, and more, his references to color are strange. Iron and sheep are violet, honey is green.
So Gladstone decided to count the color references in the book. And while black is mentioned almost 200 times and white around 100, other colors are rare. Red is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10. Gladstone started looking at other ancient Greek texts, and noticed the same thing — there was never anything described as "blue." The word didn't even exist.
Perhaps a colorless world.
A philologist, Lazarus Geiger looked to see when "blue" started to appear in languages and found an odd pattern all over the world.
Every language first had a word for black and for white, or dark and light. The next word for a color to come into existence — in every language studied around the world — was red, the color of blood and wine.
After red, historically, yellow appears, and later, green (though in a couple of languages, yellow and green switch places). The last of these colors to appear in every language is blue.
The only ancient culture to develop a word for blue was the Egyptians — and as it happens, they were also the only culture that had a way to produce a blue dye.
From the interesting observation comes the wacko thesis: If you do not have a word for something, do you see it? This chicken-egg worry might be worth an academic chair.
But eyes are blue. And the sky is blue.
And Homer was blind.
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