Why The Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue 

this video blue my mind

Imagine being alive when the Blue DLC dropped.

“Blue is one of the hardest colors to create!“ *Purple: Allow me to introduce myself.*

As people mentioned below, you will find many references to the color blue (κυάνεος or κυάνος) in Homer's works. Since κυάνος is used to describe steel (σίδηρος) and clouds (νεφέλη νέφος Π 66 Δ 282), it is often translated as "dark blue." However, the rare term "κυανῶπις" (μ 60) can be translated as "blue-eyed."

Because, back then, everything was black and white. Trust me. I've seen it in movies.

in indonesian, we call pink "young red"

Blue appeared in ancient text many times, but I'm afraid not in your research. You mentioned ancient Indian text- the word for Blue in Sanskrit is "Neel". Neel is also the word for sky in Sanskrit (many sanskrit words for color are based on object - like orange) It is mentioned multiple times to describe the color of peacock, sky and even Hindu God Vishnu (he had the blue tint). Lord Shiva drank the poison and hence his throat turned into Blue - hence his name "Neelakanth". Mountains afar are described as blue and blue is everywhere.

The ancient Greeks never used the word 'blue' because they only spoke Greek

Redheads are called redheads even though they clearly have orange hair because English didn't have a word for orange until quite recently and so orange was once considered a shade of red and yellow.

Can't wait for the sequel in 2020 years when they say "These people couldn't see the color Lepu"

The details and decoration on early archaic Greek statues were painted with azurite which gives that brilliant blue colour, traces of which survive.

I can vouch for the idea of being trained to see different 'colours'. When I worked in a laboratory which made colouring for the food and cosmetic industry, I had to learn minute, subtle differences in shades of similar colours. Initially, I couldn't 'see' them, and thought I would never be able to match them. But, after a few months I did begin to notice the very small differences, and this ability grew with time and experience. One day, out of curiosity, I went back to the two samples I had been shown on my first day of work. I was astonished with the differences I now perceived, and couldn't believe that I didn't recognise them when starting out.

It’s 5020 “Why these people couldn’t see Gyret, Brimple, Prattle, Bete, and Ornhack.”

This explains why having a large vocabulary makes a person have more precise thoughts.

The last explanation sounds right to me. I lost my memory when I was 17 due to meningitis, much like a concussion might affect the brain, and all memory of colours, smell, taste were disconnected, along with word associations. Then when I finally connected with red things like strawberries or tomatoes, I could taste them, and connect all the items that are available. Otherwise before that, the world really did seem all black and white and my perception of colours was mixed up. It makes sense that ancient civilisations wouldn't associate with a colour until their brains evolved to "find" it. Also, while the cones in the eyes are set to frequency bands, we still have to connect with things that we can use to link words to them. It's likely we could differentiate the frequencies but not separate the higher blue frequency from green.

"To venture out upon the wine dark sea." There was some speculation that Homer may have been using the color of deep red wine in a terra cotta cup to describe the color of the sea at a certain time of day. As in early dawn when the Sun is at a low angle and the tide is right for sailing or starting a journey. Translation of ancient languages into the modern is an art, not a science. It must take into account both the literal as well as the "felt" meaning (i.e., the emotional content) which the ancient author's phrase actually carried. And to get that right is no mean feat.

"The human brain is the most complicated thing in the universe." - The human Brain

I'm going to start describing my eye color as wine-dark.

I would go along with this video, if only the narrator told us he had visited ancient Greece.

I speak both Spanish and English, and this is something I totally notice. To me saying the sky is "blue" just sounds weird, because in Spanish we have a different word for that color "celeste" (at least in Argentina). And I notice how English speaking people don't distinguish it so much. Sure everyone can notice the different shades of blue, but to me it's just a different color, just like the red/pink example

I mean they weren’t wrong calling the sky “black” because it is technically black at night

On Wednesdays we wear a light form of red.

In Turkish language, we have pretty much the opposite happening. We have two distinct words for lighter shades of blue and darker shades of blue ("mavi" for lighter and "lacivert" for darker) and no word to define the whole shades of blue. I think due to this distinction, two shades of blue are almost considered as different hues.

This blue my mind. Thank you!

Of course they couldn't see blue, history was all in black and white. I'm not falling for lies.

Imagine 10 thousand years later somebody making a video : Why ancient millennials and Gen-Z's couldn't see the colour "Terp"

Have you ever experienced a particular type of Deja Vu where you seem to notice something more after hearing about it? Consider the example of seeing a fleet of cars in a parking lot. Your mind processes them as mere vehicles, without any particular significance. Yet, upon visiting a car dealership and learning about a specific brand, even if you believe it to be a rarity in your area, you begin to perceive it almost everywhere. In fact, it becomes a commonplace feature of your daily life. This phenomenon is truly fascinating, and it raises questions about how our minds perceive the world around us. This might in fact, be the reason for *all* of this.

Fascinating insights! This video really made me rethink how language shapes our perception of colors. Great job!

"But blue? it was one of the hardest colors to create" Purple: hold my beer

Ancient Greeks: “I’m feeling wine-dark today”.

This is really fascinating! Thanks

People saw blue in antiquity. The Egyptians called it irtyu or khesbedj (𓐍𓋴𓃀𓆓𓈒). The ancient Hebrews called it Tekhelet. The ancient Romans called it caerŭlus. The sky appears blue in some Pompeii mosaics.

"Why Homer couldn't see blue" - he was blind

“Why the Greeks can’t see blue”: Greeks: Hey, you guys like the invisible flag?

That's so coooooooolllll thank you for starting my day so interesting!

Fascinating! I really enjoyed this video.

The language part is also seen when a child doesn’t recognise swearing until they know the word

"the limits of my language mean the limits of my world" Ludwig Wittgenstein

I grew up with black and white TV. A TV with colors we had the first time in the end of the 70th. They existed prior to that but were very expensive. Having said this we actually had no problem with movies that only showed us white, black and all variations of grey in between. Somehow in a subconcious way we "gueesed" whether this kind of gray was really green, blue, yellow or red. Of course we knew that gras was green. So we "saw" it in movies that offered landscapes although what we really saw was a shade of grey. Etc.

Fascinating stuff. In the 4 Bantu languages, I know there's no word for Blue. Even tho southern Africa has some of Bluest skies in the world & for most days of the year. Indeed, it's one of the first things European visitors & tourists comment about: "Oh, how Blue your sky is!" Something which we take for granted here. In these languages, Blue is seen as a version/type of Green & is called "the Green of the Sky". Now you have taught me this is not that unusual after all. Thanks a lot.

In old Japanese, we call green “ao” meaning “blue”. We still call green signal “ao-shingo(signal)”. I always thought it was strange, but I guess we had way more words to describe colors back then.

This is true. That's why they are called 'red' onion, when they are clearly purple. There didn't used to be a word for purple.

What an interesting channel, thank you!!

This video just lives in the back of my brain now. Thank you.

greek: "looks up the sky" the sky: [REDACTED]

It’s like when you meet someone new in school and “suddenly u see them everywhere”

It's like sitting in diner with people talking everywhere around you. If someone says your name, even if it has nothing to do with you, you will hear it immediately.

Ancient Greeks: there is no blue Current Greeks; Blue is the only color we have

*The year is 3100* OurTube: Why Ancient Europeans Couldn't See Blurple

This actually makes so much sense. As a kid cyan was just blue, beige was yellow, lime was green, magenta was pink etc.

In the Sanskrit language from India, one of the oldest languages in the world predating the Christian era ,the word blue is mentioned as Nila. The Hindu god Shiv is sometimes referred to as Nilkantha. So the utterance of the word blue predates all other languages in the world.

The ancient Romans famously had a famous team of chariot racers called the Blues who wore the color blue. Too bad the ancient Greeks never had any contact with ancient Rome , aside from trade , wars and shared culture or they might have known about the color blue .

This could explain why artists can see color very well, and give each one a name.

just make a word for every color possible and *_T R A N S C E N D_*

Wow I'm so glad I clicked on this video and watched it!

In Chinese (Mandarin), there exists a color called 青色 (Qīng sé). Traditionally this color has been used to refer to both green and blue. For example the sky is qing but so is the green Lake. Jade (a naturally green stone) is also said to be of this colour. While in modern times it refers to mostly a bluish-green/sea-green shade, in ancient times it referred to green, blue, and everything in between. This also happens to be my favorite color in the world

Video answer: they did, languages just develop over time based on need

Cyan, is blue. "Its name is derived from the Ancient Greek κύανος, transliterated kyanos, meaning dark blue, dark blue enamel, Lapis lazuli"

As the video points out, this was true across all ancient civilizations. Many other colors were also combined. For example, in ancient color yellow and brown were the same color. That’s why the Yellow River (in China) is named so despite being entirely brown. Fun fact - in Chinese pink is called “powdery red,” since pink is truly a hue of red.

Regarding the Photoshop example, any color on the darker spectrum leads to black, not just blue.

Somali doesn't have a word for "purple." All my friends would say it was either a dark blue or sometime a dark pink.

When you learn a new word and start seing and hearing it everywhere it's a sign that you should clear your cookies in the Matrix.

A more likely possibility is that they could see it, but regarded it as one of the shades of green rather than as a colour in its own right, so they did not bother giving it a separate name. Even among modern English-speakers, the actual boundary between green and blue is debatable. We talk about deep "blue sea", but "Yellow Submarine" says "seas of green".

Awesome video! I loved this! Content was awesome, perfectly articulated, great video editing. Loved every minute and shared it with friends.

1:53 “Blue is the final color“ Purple and Orange: 😔

Ancient Japanese didn’t have a word for green. 🇯🇵 It was just a shade of blue. They still call the stoplights red and blue, even though it’s green! 🚦

This was fascinating. I've never considered this kind of link between language and neurology.

That's completely wrong, greeks had a word for blue, they actually had 3. The first thing you have to understand is that greeks classified colors differently than us, they had a dark tonality and light/bright tonality of each color, so they had dark green(prasinos) and bright green(chloros) but they dont match exactly the threshold to what we call light green since yellow for them was light green, but also a more redish yellow and yellowish orange for them was (xanthos) and a darker orange for them was (purrhos), our pink for them was bright purple, and our dark blue was for then kyaneos, our light blue was Glaukos(a greenish blue actually) and our sky blue was for them lampros(sometimes translated simply as bright but they had another word for brightness so lampros was actually a color) Our current colors are a mix of greek, persian and roman colors so the boundaries of what we call yellow doesn't actually match those of what anciet greeks used to call yellow, or red, or any other color, might be weird for us that light green and light blue was the same color for them but its like when your wife tells you a shirt is "salmon" and you see it pink.

That makes sense why, in the Odyssey, they kept describing Athena’s eyes as “foamy, ocean.. *grey* “

They actually had word(s) for blue. Kyanos (Cyan - deep or sea blue) and Glaukos (light blue), Kyanoglaukos (something between cyan and light blue), Galanos (the colour of the calm sea), Kal(l)ais (turquoise), Porphyra (purple blue). These are all from Ancient Greek mind you. Modern Greek has those as well as compounds of those. And of course ble (blue thanks to French being the previous lingua franca)... So "Wine dark sea" is used as a poetic license in guess what(!): Homeric Epic poems...Very descriptive as a phrase of the Aegean sea colour just after sunset, or during a storm...

In Spanish we have a word for light blue(Celeste) which is to Blue what Pink is to Red.

Holy crap, is that Mitch Moffit from BBCAN4?! I loved this video and I’ve subscribed faster than any other channel!

**learns to identify every hex RGB code** *Mortals, I can see through your camouflage*

That feedback loop is also responsible for the weird feeling of when you get a new car, then all the sudden you see people driving the same car as you everywhere.

This is a bit like Italy now but in reverse. They have a word for Blue (Blu), but then they have a separate word for light blue (Azzuro), like we do for pink. They would never call the Italian football kit Blue for example, it's Azzuro to them. Just like we'd call Palermo's kit pink and not light red.

Have we considered the possibility that wine in ancient greece was the colour of the ocean, sheep where violet and they made green honey? I think we should be told.

When I got a new car, I suddenly started noticing that everyone had my car model verses before I never even noticed that the model existed

You know it’s kind of like meeting new people. Before you meet them they blend in with the crowd, but after meeting them, they start popping up in the hallway all the time

Actually the reason they sometimes called the sky 'black' is because they were referring to the night sky which is obviously colorless. The more you know!

He left out the Inuit for example who have 40 to 50 words for snow. The confounding variable is the sky can be many types of blue as can the ocean. So why would they use a single word for a multiplicity in their existence attentional tunnelling of description according to relevance of their life. So quite straightforward answer.

"Blue is the final color to enter the language in every single culture." That's it guys, we got blue, time to wrap up the whole color naming project.

Regarding Homer's reference to the "wine-dark" seas, I recommended for people to take a cruise around the Aegean & Ionian Seas, once you sail off the coast, the color you will see the most is PERFECTLY described by using the word "wine-dark" seas, as it has almost a purplish Blueberry Hue. Hope that helps! 👍 -Sebastianos the Philhellene 🇬🇷© Edit: Wow, almost 1,000 Likes! Thank You everyone. I guess many of you have seen it or know what I am talking about then!

I cant belive you actually made monney on this Video.

Just because they don't have the color blue in their language, doesn't mean they didn't see the color blue. It would be like saying that purple was never mentioned, therefore it was never seen. Maybe they considered purple as a reddish sky color. Or, in terms of the sky, maybe they saw it as a shade of green (e.g. as green goes from cyan or cerulean to more of what we call "blue").

'There arent many blue foods' Percy jackson is typing...

In the Vietnamese language, green and blue are “Xanh” (pronounced “sun”). They are distinguished as Xanh Troi (troi means sky) as Blue and Xanh La (La means leaf) as Green.

In Hebrew, the term "tekhelet" is traditionally understood to refer to a specific blue dye, made from the secretion of the Murex trunculus snail. This dye was used in various contexts, including religious garments and the Tabernacle, as stated in the Bible. Some scholars have indeed questioned whether "tekhelet" should be translated as blue, positing that the term might have referred to a range of colors. But the Talmud (the central text of Rabbinic Judaism) contains discussions that elaborate on how "tekhelet" was produced, and it strongly suggests that the color was blue. archaeological findings, such as dyed textiles and remnants of dye production facilities, as well as studies on the Murex trunculus, lend strong support to the traditional understanding of "tekhelet" as blue. The weight of textual, archaeological, and historical evidence supports the notion that the Bible does indeed mention the color blue.

What if ancient people saw the sky turn from blue to black at night so they assumed that black is just the darkest shade of blue and light black is blue, so that is why they didn’t need a word for it. Even the ocean at night or at depths is black.

It's like the Eskimo/Inuit having no word for 'snow', but lots of words for different kinds of snow.

Fun fact: blue was so rare, that lapis lazuli - now considered to be semi-precious stone - was once more important then gold. Lapis also often was depicted as magical and thanks to that we can see it having magical abilities in games like Minecraft and other media.

Thank you for this fascinating analysis. I picked this up in Plato, who srote in the C4thBCE. He describes the colour of our planet's oceans as seen from space with a word conventionally translated as "purple" - a colour dye which had been around since the C6th BCE.

I feel like english speakers still have trouble deciding whether something that is clearly teal or aqua, is green or blue. A local water park has a slide that is clearly red, and one that is a darkish aqua. I've heard very few people call it teal or aqua, but the split of people who call it blue vs those who call it green is almost even. I also have a teal coat, I call it green, but most of the people I've heard referring to it's color tend to call it blue.

Imagine in the future where other people are surprised we can not see Humulkus

Title: Why the Ancient Greeks Couldn’t See Blue First minute: OK so they could see blue but they didn’t have a word for it

I just looked it up. “Blue” appears in the King James Version of the Bible 50 times. Not sure how it was translated form the original text, but here’s the first occurrence: “And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,” Exodus 25:4

A great example of this in action using one's eyes, is when you get a new car (or new to you), you suddenly notice all the same vehicle on the roads around you that you "never saw before" when you are out and about in traffic. It is super weird but that is the same mechanism in action for our brains. You saw the car you just bought all the time but never actually "noticed it" before.

Ancient Greek People: *look at the sky* The Sky: *PNG Checkerboard*

A huge portion of the human experience resides only in our minds. It's crazy, bro

I think the best example for English speakers to understand the thing with recognising pink vs red is Italy does the same thing with blues, if you describe the sea as blue to an Italian they’ll scold you cos they make a strong distinction between what we’d think of as a navy or royal blue and azure, where we’d probably see that colour range as all just blues they separate azure out like we do with pink😊

Orange came after blue in english. Prior to the import of the fruit the colour was a shade of "red" which is why orange-haired people are called "red heads'