Investigating the Invisible Color that Ancient People Couldn’t See

originally posted by: dude1
While my vision isn't very good for afar and even same for near , i can see colors okay.

I thought most people could see the different shade of green. When you look at it its like lime vs the others unripe lemon.

Training can help see shades better , if you look at many angles of different leavss and shouts of different plants , you can see many shades of green , at fist they all look like a confusing continuum , but enough comparisons between them can make them discrete.

I don't buy the "can't see blue line" , they didn't have a word for alot of things they can perceive and understand.

The word consciousness is even newer , and there are many others.

Maybe you're right. If you do have a word for it then that kind of trains you to see the color. No word, you don't even think about it.

originally posted by: Prene
This old nonsense again. Notice zero replies to Djarums mention of tekhelet.

The sky used to be purple so colors were categorized differently until AD. But blue was always a color. So was pink. And transparent. And sparkley.

The only mention I saw of anything like the tekhelet comment was in the article "Oldest Indigo-Dyed Fabric Ever Is Discovered in Peru" that another poster pointed out. It says, "Previously, the oldest sample of blue-dyed fabric dated to around 4,400 years ago in Egypt, with the oldest written references to blue dye going back to around 5,000 years ago in the Middle East."

I wonder when we could see the color "clear" or even if that is a color.

originally posted by: howtonhawky
Much of the sea is green and not blue.

If they did not see blue then why did they not describe the sea as being green?

I don't know but the articles say they considered blue to be a shade of green. Maybe that is why. From the sea.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
Yeah, color is a spectrum. Different societies divide the spectrum up differently. And the way our brains perceive color is hugely dependent on context.

Yea. That's kind of like what Prene was saying here. "The sky used to be purple so colors were categorized differently until AD."

I've never heard of that until today but then I never thought about any of this before. Guess it was invisible to me.

originally posted by: IAMNOTYOU
a reply to: toms54

Do you remember the fuss a couple of years back, about a picture of a dress, where people saw two different colors. Some saw a blue dress, others saw a golden color i think it was. The mind got tricked somehow, and some people could reverse it and suddenly see the other color.

The dress. Both of the articles in the OP have picture of the dress and cite it as evidence. I left that out because the post was already getting too long. But they discuss it if you want to look at one of the links.

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: IAMNOTYOU
a reply to: toms54

Do you remember the fuss a couple of years back, about a picture of a dress, where people saw two different colors. Some saw a blue dress, others saw a golden color i think it was. The mind got tricked somehow, and some people could reverse it and suddenly see the other color.

The dress. Both of the articles in the OP have picture of the dress and cite it as evidence. I left that out because the post was already getting too long. But they discuss it if you want to look at one of the links.

Looking at it now, but it is a long read, so iam gonna save it for tomorrow, it is almost midnight where i am. But i find this very interesting

I would like to imagine that Mexicans know the difference between chicken eggs and male testes.
Juevos.
Same word for two very different things.
To. Too. Two.

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

It was probably yellow, but they couldn't tell the difference.
If you go where the Huskies go, don't you eat that yellow snow

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

You sound like a Mahani.;

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

You sound like a Mahani.;

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

You sound like a Mahani.;

I was searching Google for history of color. There is quite a lot there. Here is a short video that touches upon some things here:

The surprising pattern behind color names around the world
6:45

a reply to: skunkape23

Chicken eggs = huevos

Male testes = juevos/guevos

Subtle difference.

a reply to: toms54

It's probably down to the lack of words to describe the colour.

We've evolved with our languages, as we become more adapt at describing the world our language becomes more complex.

Indigo and woad (blue) were common dyes in the past, the Picts used woad a lot. They'll have used other dyes too but it doesn't seem to be the case that they used replacements such as green or switched between blue and other colours without noticing.

They knew the distinct colour and knew how to acquire it, I can only conclude that they could perceive the colour blue.

Finding another name for that colour relative to history becomes the problem. Many languages are dead and buried and the ones that remain are few and far between when looking through the lens of history. It's why we investigate history, we do our best to fill in the blanks.

Sometimes our conclusions are way off mark, "no colour blue" is probably a case of that.

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: toms54

Without words to describe them, how would you describe them?

Cultures that have no word for zero...how do they describe zero?

Do you not recognize it because there's no word or is there no word because you don't recognize it?

These authors suggest the latter.

Neither.

I imagine explaining zero to people with no concept of it would say "this crazy fool is literally rabbiting on about nothing".

The human mind is a tricky thing when it comes to conceptualisation.

Communication needn't be complex. Think of it this way, zero is an applied word. An ancient might describe their basket as empty which is relatively simple or they may have said my basket has zero berries.

See how zero makes things more complex? In some situations needlessly so?

Saying the basket has zero berries might leave it left to interpretation that their may be eggs or anything in it.

Zero as a concept comes with a whole lot of other cognitive ability, abilities our ancestors didn't need or hadn't evolved. That's far from saying that those of the past could not conceptualise the idea of nothing.

That's just us getting confused, complicating what's seemingly simple.

I see the lack of a colour blue in history in a similar light. They had other ways of describing it and naming it.

originally posted by: skunkape23

originally posted by: Wrapscalllionn

originally posted by: toms54

originally posted by: Butterfinger
a reply to: Wrapscalllionn

From what Ive been told, the Chickasaw and Choctaw languages were formed well before De Soto recorded his experiences, 2 centuries before the removal.

Some others I'm noticing with my limited knowledge
"Oka" means Water
"Okti" is Snow
The Ok brings it to relation with water, some root word in ancient Muskogean?

These Chickasaw and Choctaw languages sound very interesting. I would like to see a thread on just that.

they are. For instance, Most people think Oklahoma means " land of the indians" but its really a portmanteu'd choctaw word meaning Red Water.

You sound like a Mahani.;

i have been called an apple before ( red on the outside, white on the inside), but i dont know what mahani means.

What was the ancient word for shoot?

The ancients didn't fire bows or shoot them either, they're modern words associated with modern weaponry, it's us that apply them in a historical sense.

With the lack of these words in history am I to assume that they never hunted and although they had bows and arrows they had no concept of "firing" them?

Am I then to assume these things were mere ornaments?

I'm probably oversimplifying in my comparison... Then again maybe not, I imagine they used a word like throw. Which is probably confusing for a modern person, they weren't throwing bows and arrows at each other...

a reply to: trollz

I could not see the different green square at all, and still cannot see any difference, to the point where I started to wonder if it was a trick.

I am not color blind either, from any normal test for color blindness; so, what does that mean?

a reply to: trollz

I could tell that square was different, but I can't tell why, only that it was.