Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue [6:39]

YouTube ^ | November 24, 2020 | AsapSCIENCE

[SunkenCiv]

Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue | 6:39
AsapSCIENCE | 10.6M subscribers | 7,637,162 views | November 24, 2020

[SunkenCiv]

Transcript
	·	Intro
0:00	·	Why is the sky blue?
0:01	·	It's one of the most common questions
0:03	·	asked by both kids and adults,
0:05	·	unless you're from ancient Greece.
0:07	·	I know, I know, you'd think the country
0:09	·	that is now ubiquitously known for beautiful blue rooftops,
0:12	·	crystal blue waters, and a blue flag
0:15	·	would have a longer history with the color.
0:17	·	But if you were to read Homer,
0:19	·	uh, not that one,
0:20	·	the famous ancient Greek writer from the 8th century B.C.,
0:23	·	you'd notice that the word blue isn't mentioned once.
0:26	·	Through thousands of pages of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey,"
0:30	·	black is mentioned 170 times, white 100, red 13 times,
0:35	·	yellow and green each around 10, but blue never appears.
0:39	·	What's weirder is that Homer describes things
0:42	·	that we would normally call blue, like the ocean,
0:45	·	as wine-dark.
0:46	·	He even calls honey green and sheep violet.
0:49	·	For a while, some suggested that maybe
0:51	·	the ancient Greeks just saw colors different than we do,
0:53	·	or maybe they were all color blind.
0:55	·	But we now know that color vision developed
0:57	·	around 30 million years ago so that's not it.
1:00	·	It gets even crazier.
	·	Other civilizations
1:01	·	As historians and researchers began looking into
1:03	·	other ancient civilizations, they realized the same thing.
1:07	·	Almost none of them used the word blue.
1:10	·	From Icelandic texts to ancient Indian epics
1:13	·	dating to about four millennia ago,
1:15	·	to ancient Chinese writings,
1:17	·	and even the original Hebrew Bible,
1:19	·	all of them fail to mention blue once,
1:22	·	while all of them mention black, white, and red,
1:25	·	and many, the Bible included, also mention green and yellow.
1:28	·	Again, it's not like they don't talk about things
1:30	·	that we would call blue.
1:32	·	They describe the ocean as wide, stormy, silent,
1:35	·	but never blue.
	·	Language order
1:37	·	It wasn't until the mid-1800s
1:39	·	that linguists began to analyze the history of languages
1:41	·	and found something peculiar.
1:43	·	In every culture, black and white are first.
1:45	·	Then the first color to enter the language is always red.
1:49	·	Then yellow follows, then green.
1:51	·	And then blue is the final color to enter language
1:54	·	in every single culture.
1:56	·	Over the years, researchers have found
1:58	·	some minor exceptions with the middle order,
2:00	·	so green and yellow,
2:01	·	but red is always first and blue is always last
2:04	·	in every single language.
2:06	·	So, why this order?
	·	Evolutionary explanation
2:07	·	There's two main theories.
2:08	·	First, the evolutionary explanation is simple.
2:11	·	Black and white help distinguish between night and day,
2:14	·	light and dark, and are the most clear and useful,
2:17	·	so every culture has those.
2:18	·	Then red, it's often associated with blood or danger.
2:22	·	Even human faces and communication use red
2:24	·	through the galvanic skin response,
2:26	·	like when you blush or are stressed.
2:28	·	Green and yellow entered language as the need to distinguish
2:31	·	between ripe and unripe foods.
2:32	·	And blue?
2:33	·	There's very few blue things that we actually interact with.
2:36	·	Blue fruits are pretty rare.
2:38	·	Blue animals are rare too.
2:40	·	And when they are blue, it's often not a pigment,
2:42	·	but a sort of light illusion, like in butterflies.
2:45	·	Even the modern European language words for blue
2:48	·	are derived from ancient words for black or green.
2:51	·	The second explanation suggests
2:52	·	that these words don't enter language
2:54	·	until humans could make them.
2:56	·	Red being the easiest and most accessible color,
2:58	·	because you just take a piece of dry clay
3:00	·	and use it as a crayon.
3:01	·	If you think of cave, for example,
3:03	·	there's a lot of black and red in them.
3:05	·	But blue?
3:06	·	It's one of the hardest colors to create.
3:08	·	For thousands because of years,
3:09	·	nobody had it except the Egyptians,
3:12	·	and they had a word for it.
3:13	·	So does this mean that ancient people couldn't see
3:16	·	those colors before they had a word for it?
3:18	·	Not exactly.
3:19	·	Early humans would have considered colors
3:21	·	as simply hues of black, white, or red,
	·	Modern day evidence
3:23	·	which sounds kind of crazy,
3:24	·	but there's actually modern day evidence for this.
3:26	·	If you look at these 12 colors,
3:28	·	can you spot the one that's different?
3:30	·	We might think clearly it's this one,
3:32	·	but when presented with a similar chart,
3:34	·	the Himba people of Namibia,
3:37	·	who don't have a separate word for blue,
3:39	·	take longer to point out this distinction.
3:41	·	On the contrary, when looking at green colors,
3:43	·	they are more quickly able to note the difference
3:45	·	that we wouldn't catch as quickly, this one.
3:48	·	And this is because they have more words for types of green
3:50	·	than we do in English.
3:52	·	In fact, one of their color categories clumps
3:54	·	some types of blue and green together,
3:56	·	while they have other color categories
3:57	·	for different greens still.
3:59	·	In the 1890s, anthropologists discovered
4:01	·	that indigenous islanders in New Guinea described the sky
4:04	·	as black or dirty like water.
4:06	·	Which, if you think about it, isn't that surprising.
4:08	·	Even if you look at a color picker in Photoshop,
4:10	·	it's clear that a dark or navy blue isn't actually
4:13	·	that far from being black,
4:14	·	and is quite far from other hues
4:16	·	which we would still call blue.
4:18	·	In that sense, black would have been a much broader term
4:21	·	for early and ancient humans.
4:22	·	It's kinda like how these are all shades of red.
4:25	·	We wouldn't call them different colors necessarily.
4:28	·	But this, in English, we call pink.
4:30	·	Even though it's technically just another shade of red,
4:33	·	we've decided to categorize it as separate
4:35	·	and as a result, it's different in our minds.
4:37	·	Of course, even if we didn't name it pink,
4:39	·	we'd still be able to see that it's a different color,
4:42	·	a lighter hue,
4:43	·	but ultimately, we'd consider it a form of red.
4:46	·	Now, you might be thinking this just seems semantic.
4:48	·	So what, they have different names.
4:49	·	There's no functional difference
4:51	·	in the actual color we're seeing.
4:53	·	But neuroscience has found that to be untrue.
4:55	·	It turns out, and this is mind blowing,
4:58	·	that language trains our brain to see colors differently.
5:01	·	What this means is once we have a new word for a color,
5:05	·	there's a feedback loop in the brain
5:07	·	and this exaggerates the differences between those colors,
5:10	·	especially at the border areas between them.
5:12	·	We get used to calling these colors as distinct hues
5:15	·	and as a result, the brain more aptly sees them
5:18	·	as distinct hues.
5:19	·	Without the word, you would still see the color,
5:21	·	but you wouldn't notice or contextualize it in the same way.
5:24	·	If that still feels bizarre, because I know it did for me,
5:27	·	think about learning a new language.
5:29	·	At first, everything just looks or sounds like gibberish.
5:32	·	You can't tell the verbs apart from the nouns,
5:35	·	let alone one word from the next,
5:37	·	because you are just learning.
5:38	·	But slowly over time, your brain starts to pick up
5:41	·	on these categories and patterns
5:43	·	and can recognize minor differences much faster.
5:46	·	It's not like you couldn't tell
5:47	·	the words were different before,
5:49	·	but it all sort of blended together.
5:51	·	Once you become more familiar with it,
5:53	·	you start to see and hear those words much more clearly.
	·	Outro
5:56	·	Honestly, it's kinda like when I learn a new English word
5:59	·	and then suddenly I hear it everywhere,
6:01	·	I see it everywhere.
6:02	·	But the truth is I probably came across that word before
6:05	·	but just didn't notice it.
6:06	·	But now that I've surely learned the word,
6:08	·	the feedback loop is there and so I truly notice it.
6:12	·	It's a wild example of how our amazing brains
6:14	·	have allowed us to create language,
6:16	·	but then that language turned back around
6:18	·	and has an impact on brain function.
6:20	·	Not only is our perception of the world an illusion,
6:22	·	our brains are an active part of creating it.
6:25	·	Thank you so much for watching.
6:26	·	I hope you found it as interesting as I genuinely did.
6:29	·	If you like our videos, make sure you're subscribed,
6:31	·	make sure you leave a like on this video,
6:33	·	and you can join our mailing list
6:34	·	with the link in the description.
6:35	·	Otherwise we will see you next time for a new science video.
6:38	·	Peace.

[SunkenCiv]

Well, the trolling in this topic should be a lot of fun.

• The mystery of the 'blue monkeys' in ancient Grecian frescoes, solved [04/27/2020]
• Guideposts: Against the Dying of the Light, and Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED [02/21/2024]

[Jonty30]

There is evidence that the Greeks used the word, “copper”, to describe blue because of the colour copper turns into when oxidizing.

[SunkenCiv]

https://search.brave.com/search?q=purple+burglar+alarm

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=purple+burglar+alarm

https://www.google.com/search?q=purple+burglar+alarm

[Red Badger]

Blues clues.....................

[Red Badger]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqHLLgVUFrI

[Red Badger]

Blue is considered a ‘sacred’ color and is reserved for religious purposes, or royalty....................

[married21]

I’m told Japanese people think of a green traffic light as blue. The two colors get conflated.

[SubMareener]

This appears to be a promulgating bum dope.

Strong’s H8504 - tᵊḵēleṯ
תְּכֵלֶת tᵉkêleth, tek-ay’-leth; probably for H7827; the cerulean mussel, i.e. the color (violet) obtained therefrom or stuff dyed therewith:—blue.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h8504/kjv/wlc/0-1/

And there is this: https://www.slowboring.com/p/greeks-blue

The bizarre myth that Ancient Greeks couldn’t see blue

[Craftmore]

Before the invention of color tv the entire world was black an white.

[JimRed]

(singing) I’mmm Mister Blue (wah-ooo, wah-ooo)...

[reed13k]

There is similar Color language development in other languages. The one I’m most familiar with is in Japanese Ao/Aoi was used to refer to both blue and green and only began showing up during the Heian period (794-1185). However, it’s still mainly used only for certain things: plants, vegetables, and fruits.

Even today what we would call a ‘green traffic light’ is referred to as aoshingo or ‘blue traffic light’ in direct translation.

In ancient Japan there were only 4 colors: black, white, red, and blue. Later ki for a time covered yellow, light brown and gold before eventually chairo (brown) and kiro (yellow) separated (ki is also how you pronounce tree, so....), orenji as you can assume came from English mainly because the original Chinese borrowed word (daidaiiro) wasn’t included in the compulsory education curriculum and thus fell out of use in place of the english borrowed word.

Word development can be so interesting.

[jimtorr]

Here is a thorough debunking of the idea that the Greeks could not see blue (hint: they simply called it something else).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omPGq_cu58Y

[lefty-lie-spy]

This is true. A green traffic light is called “blue”. Otherwise, blue is blue and green is green. In any crossover contexts of blue-greenness I suppose blue will be used to describe that color.

[BenLurkin]

The sky must have not looked very interesting.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

This person is ignoring Japan where the word for "Green" came into the language so late that some of the stop lights are red, yellow and blue.

[algore]

I had heard this before, I assumed they used a different word.

Today because of all the weather modification going on I rarely see a blue sky, it is misty white most of the time

[null and void]

This makes me sad.

blue

[null and void]

I’m told Japanese people think of a green traffic light as blue. The two colors get conflated.

Signal red isn't red, signal green isn't green.

If they were, a man with red-green color blindness (5% of the population) wouldn't be able to distinguish them with possibly lethal consequences.

Signal red is tinged with yellow.
Signal green is tinged with blue.

Now you won't be able to unsee it...

[chajin]

I’m told Japanese people think of a green traffic light as blue. The two colors get conflated.

There is a specific term for green in Japanese, midori, which is used for a deep green, as in the green of matcha.

The generic term is aoi, which is used both for green and for blue. For example, aoyama means "green mountain," but a blue pencil is aoi empitsu.