Human perception is complex and often even misleading. In fact, the deeper we look into perception, the more we realise that it is much more subjective than we would like to admit. Even colours, which are seemingly in front of everyone’s eyes, change depending on the person looking at them.
It is curious that until relatively recently in human history the colour blue did not exist, or at least not as we know it today. Historians are convinced that the word “blue” did not exist, neither among the Greeks nor among the Chinese, Japanese and Hebrews. Therefore, psychologists hypothesize that if they did not have a word to describe this colour, it is because they did not see it.
How did we realize that blue did not exist in ancient times?
In “The Odyssey,” Homer describes the “wine-dark sea,” a phrase that strikes us as rather strange today since we would use phrases like “deep blue.”
In 1858, a student named William Gladstone, later to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, noticed that this was not the only strange description of colours. Ancient Greek poets would spend entire pages describing the details of clothing, the characteristics of animals and even armour, but references to colours were rare.
So Gladstone set about counting the references to colours in this book. Black was mentioned almost 200 times and white 100 times, but the rest of the colours appeared very rarely. Red was mentioned 15 times and green and yellow less than 10 times. Gladstone also noticed that this pattern was repeated in other old books. That’s how he discovered that blue was not mentioned.
Later, the philologist Lazarus Geiger became interested in this work and realised that it was not only the Greeks who lacked the colour blue, but that it was common in other ancient cultures. In fact, it is curious that the Hindus described the sky in great detail but never mentioned that it was blue.
This philologist noticed that the development of all languages followed a fairly precise order: first, words appeared to indicate black and white, light and darkness. Later, red appeared, which was the colour of blood and wine. Then came yellow and then green. The last colour to appear was blue. The only exception were the Egyptians, who knew blue and were even able to reproduce it.
In fact, if we look around us we will notice that, apart from the sky, there is not much blue in nature. It is also no coincidence that one of the first questions children ask is: why is the sky blue?In this regard, Guy Deutscher, an Israeli linguist, was careful to conduct a particularly interesting experiment with his own daughter. He made sure not to describe the sky to her, so that he could ask her what colour it looked like. Although the little girl knew colours perfectly, she found it difficult to give an answer, until she finally said it was white and only later, she said it was blue. So blue is not exactly the first colour that comes to mind when a child sees the sky.
Does not having a word to identify a color mean not perceiving it?
It is difficult to know how the brain of Homer and the ancient writers perceived colours. However, we now know that their brains had the same capacity as ours, so there was no impediment to seeing the full range of colours that we can perceive today.
However, do we really see something for which we do not have a word?Jules Davidoff, a psychologist at the University of London, travelled to Namibia to find the answer. There he experimented with the Himba tribe, who still do not have a word for the colour blue and cannot distinguish it from green. He showed them an image showing 12 green squares and one blue square. The people were unable to identify the different colours.However, the people of this tribe had different words for different types of green. So when the researcher included a green square, a slightly different shade, they identified it with extraordinary speed. However, most of us in the West can’t do that. In fact, I challenge you to find it.
SPOILER: The different square, occupies the number 11, imagining that it is the face of a clock.
Davidoff believes that if there is no word to identify a colour, to make it different from the rest, most people will find it difficult to notice it, even if we have no physical impediment to doing so. Therefore, before the word “blue” appeared, it is likely that people in ancient times did not see it, at least not consciously.
References:
Loria, K. (2015) No one could see the color blue until modern times. In: Business Insider.
Deutscher, G. (2010) Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. Nueva York: Metropolitan Books.
Davidoff, J. et. Al. (2005) Color categories: Evidence for the cultural relativity hypothesis. Cognitive Psychology; 50(4): 378-411.
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