No One Could See the Colour blue until modern times!

I wonder how the perceptions of colors have changed, or if at all?

In the KJV Bible, the word 'blue' occurs fifty times, all of which are in the Old Testament. The Hebrew word translated as this color is tekeleth (Strong's Concordance #H8504), which is a reference to the animal from which the dye is obtained. Its use in Scripture lends itself to symbolically meaning the following.

God (Exodus 24:10, 25:3, 38:18, Numbers 4:6 - 12, 2Chronicles 2:7, Ezekiel 1:26, etc.)

Royalty (Esther 1:6, Ezekiel 23:6, Jeremiah 10:9)

Riches (Ezekiel 27:7, 24)

Service to God and godly living (Exodus 28:6, 8, 13, 31, Numbers 15:38 - 40, Esther 8:15)

Source

a reply to: Shadow Herder

I am pretty sure that aztecs described the world and cosmos as sitting in a blue bowl....inca then must have as well along with every seed culture to them like the olmec

Based on the process followed with the color Blue - people did not see in perspective...until quite recently...

Å99

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

The red and the blue crowns in ancient Egypt were significant.
colored crowns explained

One other historical reference to disprove this theory..
TA DA straight from Babylon
Enter the Ishtar Gate in Berlin !
Ishtar Gate

Red, White and Blue were borrowed from many thousands of years ago.
The Tomb of Ramesses VI at the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt will easily reveal this truth as well.

a reply to: tadaman

Also, as long as you are bringing up the Incas and Aztecs, we cant forget about the Mayan Blue that they used to paint their bodies and faces. Dont know if they saw it as a blue color or not and most likely they had a different name for it and we decided to call it Mayan Blue but it is blue to my eyes.

Is it possible that Homer was just a bad poet? Because I think he was.

a reply to: Shadow Herder

Not to be a show off our anything, but I picked out the lighter green in about 15 seconds, and I'm on my mobile phone :p so what has been said about bush people seeing more shades of green is a bunch of baloney imo. Im about as modern as they come.

www.ancient.eu...

sorry guys but what about the Ishtar Gate constructed in Babylon (c. 575 BCE) ? So, the ancients didnt know they were using blue materials for their constructions?

a reply to: Shadow Herder
Color like everything else is tied to social evolution. So ya! People in ancient times saw different things when looking at it they you would or there descendents would, even the whole word phrasing of things is a social evolution which in time changes whole outlooks on things, sometimes quite literally. Though I would not go by homers interpretation of things as over all reality of the majority of people in those times, because you know, he was blind.

But ya for the most part people in those times did not quite see the same blue you would see or vice versa, and it was more then a language thing.

Everything you see around you is merely a filtered interpretation of your mind and brain, not the actual reality, that to is just a interpretation. I suppose it would be impossible for you people to understand that till and up the point you step outside of it...Though when that happens, its like a fish out of water. Ignorance really is bliss, and the modus operandi not only of group dynamics but the whole world. Cogs in the machine I suppose, were even what color you see is predestined and conditioned.

a reply to: snowen20
Unless that book there which you linked was dug up and is an original from 7 thousand years ago. Well what you have there is an interpretation of another interpretation done so for thousands of years down the line to the most current one. So ya! Languages do evolve constantly, and it does happen a lot in most peoples generations...I mean can you think on how many itty bitty differences were made in English from your grandfathers time?

So ya! That there is not an actual representation of what was actually back then. Its a progressed and evolved version from then evlovled and changed to suit the memetic evolution and blend with the modern as the ages progressed. Every book out there and everything else set in writing would be the same, even if they wanted to they could not remain the same, not and survive. Much less so in religious groupings like that, most of it is tacked on things from previous tacked on things. And those that did remain the same? Well they went extinct, its why there called dead languages.

You could have the most austere of groups or even monks who have not changed things for centuries who have never been touched by civilization, and they still would not be the same as the original groups which started or created them, nor would be there writing or they way they describe things as the ages went by, most especially if they had any outside influence or were even aware of other groups.

a reply to: St Udio
ya they were not referring to one single thing when describing. There was no color pallet back then which you could point and pick and say ya thats blue. It evolved the other way around, from the outside world to the inner. That is the color blue did not first exist as a thing in itself, the sky and things which were in the same light spectrum across visible human groups and societies and there sight existed, and then were given the same meaning in different languages all across the world. And then much later as in more modern times were tied together the different languages as the same meaning.

And now we got this, and really there is a huge number of different shades of blue. But if you were to show this to somebody living in those centuries some of those colors would not even be blue to them, or they would not see them as blue, because in there social evolutionary makeup that color did not exist or was not prevalent. In fact how the hell is Viridian even considered a shade of blue? Merely by classification, and if everybody excepts it then it is that.
link

Language and social group aspect is a big part in what you see including colors, most of it seems to be basically just language and labels, and pretty much the whole aspect of the color blue was interpreted and reinterpreted from Babylon on up, so when people label and say that is blue today, that's a process which was interpreted upon for over 10 thousand years or so till we get to today.

Basically the things and ways you describe today and attribute to the color blue is conditioned and based on language and social evolution as well as physical evolution, in fact more so its just language and labeling thing is pretty much all it is to it. Basically just getting people to nod there heads while not actually testing it to far. Do that for thousands of years, and everybody has the basic scope of what blue is, and only as long as they dont have to differentiate between the hundreds of shades of blue.
Link


Color test I counted 43 on that little color wheel in the link. Though who the hell knows the name for all of them, dont even what to know. If that whole theory is correct then the more names you have for different shades of the same color the more color you would be able to see and differentiate from.
Color test
Kind of like that video were they went into the rainforest and asked some bush-people to name some colors with and interpreter and the primitive tribes-people were not even able to differentiate between them or see them, simply because they in there society never had use for it, or did not exist in nature or there habitat. So hence for them it did not exist...But blue was still blue, even though it was called something else in language, and was generally attributed to the word sky or water and such much more then a actual worded color they had. So for all intensive pursues they may have been saying water or sky instead of the an actual word for the color blue.

Its likely how even back then when the tribes of humans first because city states they started to first form words for actual colors, from the basic environment around them, long before the greek city states or even Babylon came to be around, and when they did? It just moved on and evolved from there...Till today. So really everything we have around us, even every history book and art book, or piece of art, is all an evolutionary constantly changing every generation or every few hundred or thousand years interpretation on past data in social contexts.

Sightly confusing article....especially considering the Mesopotamian civilization was quite fond of lapis lazuil for their murals and ceremonial effigies....and countless other ancient cultures from that time forward.

Lapis Lazuli

This article implies that since there was no word that it must reason out that there was no capacity to see that shade.

I'm more inclined to think of this as a thesis written based on facts and findings that support the original premise as opposed to using a non-biased approach. The myriad of cultures who employed the stone referenced above shows beyond a shadow of a doubt - to me at least - that the color was recognized and revered by cultures across several trade routes.

Still, it's an interesting thought exploration so there's that going for it at least.

a reply to: GENERAL EYES
I would think blue would be the most common color since its the most common to all types of civilizations all across the world. I think the wording they used in there respective languages stemmed from different natural things they put stock in there culture.

What the OP is mostly implying at is they did not all have one set actual color to describe it as, it was all a myriad of definitions based on there cultures and there gods or believes or yes even trades. So basically if two people from two different ancient cultures got together in the market and wanted to buy a piece of Lapis Lazuli, how would they go about setting a color to it when to one its some rock representing a sky goddess and the others a river god or who knows what.

Must be why in actual old translations of actual old languages they talk in such flowery embellished ways. You know magnificent doer of the four corners of creations, he who does mighty deeds and all that, whos breath and crown is unto the dawn at dusk and ect ect but I think unto dawn at dusk means bright red or orange. So it was not the actual color which was revered or even recognized, it was its rarity and the fact that it was not commonly found and generally attributed to something withing there cultural believe, even the way they describe things is by the things they found in there natural soundings and in nature or belives.

And that's what they traded for, much later a color was established to it, which eventually translated across languages. Besides lapiz lazuli is basically almost purple and gold in its natural rock state, which in most cultures was considered royal colors, and again more for its rarity then anything else. If everybody had it in those days, then it would not be a big deal. So they had the color but they did not have the general word meaning for it, basically it was not color coded, and more attributed to something within there culture religion, believe and language format more so then a color within itself.

Which makes sense since even today half the colors out there people would not know there colors...For instance magenta! Now how many people would even know thats a color, or what it looks like, and would they even know the difference between it and purple. Not likely right, unless they were first thought to spot the difference, and even then most people would still say its purple. So ya! Its all wording and programed social aspects within given contexts.

originally posted by: snowen20
According to the Oxford dictionary of Jewish religion: "ḤILLAZON" Conchiferous marine animal, the blue blood of which was used for dying the blue cord of the tsitsit.

Tsitsit: fringes attached to the four corners of garments. Numbers 15.37–41 commands that a blue thread be added to.

So here is a ancient description of not only the color blue, but a label of its color in relation to something we can visually see today as being blue.

Not sure if this will be relevant.

link

And, last year it was announced that they had even found fabric which had been dyed with the Biblical blue dye:

news.discovery.com...

a reply to: Namdru

A most educated reply. Thank you!

Don't tell me a dress is involved?

a reply to: Shadow Herder

It would certainly suck if people couldn't see the colour blue.
However I couldn't imagine a life lived without hearing, The Blues.



That would be a life not worth living.