Dig It With Raven's video: Did Blue Exist in the Ancient World

In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer famously described the sea as "wine dark" instead of blue. Was it poetry and artistic license, or did the ancient Greeks not see the colour blue? 👉🏼 Get early access and help me choose what to put out next here: https://www.patreon.com/digitwithraven Watch Next ○ Archaeologists React to Troy (2004) https://youtu.be/XEkkjGUMCU8 ○ Ancient Greek Power Bars https://youtu.be/kCOqb5TWA1A ○ The Plague of Athens https://youtu.be/7b3QLyQwoKA ✅ Let's connect! INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/digitwithraven TWITTER: https://twitter.com/digitwithraven MY GEAR ○ Zoom H4N Pro audio recorder https://amzn.to/35SGJIe ○ Microphone https://amzn.to/3clFIuR ○ Teleprompter https://amzn.to/35QX1RW ○ Lighting https://amzn.to/35QIW7j ○ Camera: Sony A6400 https://amzn.to/3Ik8YEE Blue… at least as a concept might not have existed at all in the ancient world. In fact, the word for blue seems to be the last major colour to develop in a language, and the ancient Egyptians were the only ancient culture to have both a word for blue and a blue pigment. Except for maybe the Minoans... So did that mean the ancient cultures were colourblind? Sort of… but not really. A lot of people believe that the way we see blue as a distinct colour is a modern development… but it’s not as universally known as you might think. Turns out, blue is one of the last colours to enter our vocabulary, in any language! But does that mean we're colourblind to a colour until we have a word for it? RESOURCES Winawer J, Witthoft N, Frank M , Wu L, Wade A, Boroditsky L. (2007) The Russian Blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 104:7780-7785. doi:10.1073/pnas.0701644104 An Analysis of Blue Pigments from the Greek Bronze Age by S. E. Filippakis, B. Perdikatsis, T. Paradellis - Studies in Conservation, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Aug., 1976), pp. 143-153 (11 pages) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1505697 Studies on Homer in the Homeric Age by William Gladstone https://archive.org/details/studiesonhomerho03glad/page/n489/mode/2up ************** My top archaeology 101 book https://amzn.to/2EcgVtQ ************** Some of these links are affiliate. If you purchase anything from these links I may earn a small commission. This really helps in supporting the channel. I am not promoting anything that I do not 100% recommend or would not use myself!