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> Egypt, Mesopotamia and the medieval Islamic cultures survived especially well in their extremely dry climates. And they had no violet in them at all. In anc

> Egypt, Mesopotamia and the medieval Islamic cultures survived especially well in their extremely dry climates. And they had no violet in them at all. In ancient times purple was a luxury for dying clothes, even in medieval times, and harvesting sea snails for the dye was lucrative business between egyptians, phoeniceans etc. so how come they claim we can't see it? I dont think their claim is true. What's next? "Why it took us decades to see rounded corners"?

ithkuil 5y ago
Consider the color orange. There wasn't a name for the color in antiquity. When the fruit become available, its color was referred to as "the color of a norange" (this happened independently in various European languages. Unrelated factoid, many languages with an indefinite article that ends with n, assimilated the leading n of the fruit name in the article). Clearly our ancestors could see the orange colored before they met the fruit. There are other fruit that have that color too; leaves in autumn can be pretty orange too. Orange and brown are basically different shades of the same color. Naming things is pretty powerful thing.
- eCa 5y ago
  Interestingly, in a bunch of other European languages the fruit is referred to as ”apple from China”. But the colour is still named ”orange”.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    It's fallen ever more out of use, but when I was young the colour orange was still often called "brandgult" -- "fire-yellow" -- in Swedish. (And the fruit still is an "apelsin".)
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >"fire-yellow" That reminds me how my first car was blue-green, or turquoise, to me, but other people would often call it "green". The official color name according to the manufacturer was "Tahitian Green", I think. Under sodium lights, it would look blue to me, but under other lighting, I considered it to be a blue-green. But it never made any sense to me to consider it primarily green.
    - dorchadas 5y ago
      Something similar in Irish -- orange was (and still is, among older native speakers in the Gaeltacht) flannbhuí, translating literally as 'blood red yellow'. This is actually the word used for the color on the Irish flag in their constitution. Then English influence and learners who directly port from English came along and now oráiste, which was originally only the name of the fruit, has replaced it sadly.
  - kolinko 5y ago
    In Poland the fruit is “pomarańcza”, and the colour is “pomarańczowy” :)
- tasogare 5y ago
  Interesting phenomenon concerning the name. It's the reverse of what happened to naperon which became an aperon in English.
  - alberto_ol 5y ago
    https://www.etymonline.com/word/apron https://www.etymonline.com/word/apron https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange#etymonline_v_7106 https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange#etymonline_v_7106
- Gravityloss 5y ago
  What does that have to do with "seeing the color". Of course there are words for many exact things that are typical examples of some colors. People couldn't see a particular mid-dark red before Ferrari? Bianchi celeste color? Surf green Stratocaster? Or maybe when Pantone launched their color reference system, people then suddenly started seeing them? Think how walking in a meadow must have felt after seeing all the Pantone colors with their codes, and then really seeing the flowers' colors for the first time?! This doesn't mean people didn't see the color beforehand. It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily.
  - bildung 5y ago
    > It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily. This is usually a sign that it wasn't the article's author who misunderstood ;) Physically, people obviously could see the same frequencies. But what to make of the raw perception has a cultural aspect - after all, the whole band from 400 nm to 780 nm is continuous, and we are able to perceive the complete range[0], so the color categories we use have to be arbitrary to a degree. So seeing here means consciously differentiating, not physically perceiving. Anecdote: I was working in a print shop during university. After a few years of consciously comparing small hue differences, I became almost offended if someone in class talked about a "purple" line in a graph that was clearly magenta to me. I couldn't care less a few years before. [0] = many parts indirectly, though, e.g. yellow is not a color we can see directly with the cones alone, it is processed first.
    - Gravityloss 5y ago
      That's just about caring or differentiating about relatively small difference. Not about not being able to see the whole color. Which is in the title. Recently a lot of people forwarded the idea that ancient people couldn't see blue. If you look at Egyptian artefacts, they sure have a lot of symmetrical blue accents. If they really couldn't see the color, then by accident they should have at least at times picked some other color to the left piece than the right piece?
      - 5y ago
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Purple had a name in ancient greek (porfyra) and egyptian times. The color was named after (or vice versa) the sea snail that makes it I think the whole naming of "orange" had to do with the fact that the need arose to actually discriminate the fruit you wanted by its color
- drewcoo 5y ago
  Though it would rhyme with "orange," there was not a norange: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-norange.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-norange.html
- jjk166 5y ago
  Orange (red-yellow) is a tertiary color. Most tertiary colors are named for things. Chartreuse (yellow-green) is named for a liquor and was first used in 1764, much more recently than orange. Azure (blue-cyan) is named for lapis-lazuli. Rose (magenta-red) is named for the flower. Turquoise (green-cyan) is named for the gem, with its etymology only in the 17th century. Violet (magenta-blue) is actually unique in that it's the only tertiary color that isn't named for something. Its name comes from the proto-Indo-European word for purple. (In this case, purple is the color named for a thing). The process continues for further subdivided color. Most quarternary colors don't have distinct well-accepted names, but some like scarlet, fuschia, and aquamarine are reasonably accepted. If you've gotten through life calling things yellow-green instead of using the word chartreuse, you know how people got through life without using the word orange.
danmur 5y ago
It took decades to fashion them out of tables
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ithkuil 5y ago

Consider the color orange. There wasn't a name for the color in antiquity. When the fruit become available, its color was referred to as "the color of a norange" (this happened independently in various European languages. Unrelated factoid, many languages with an indefinite article that ends with n, assimilated the leading n of the fruit name in the article). Clearly our ancestors could see the orange colored before they met the fruit. There are other fruit that have that color too; leaves in autumn can be pretty orange too. Orange and brown are basically different shades of the same color. Naming things is pretty powerful thing.

eCa 5y ago
Interestingly, in a bunch of other European languages the fruit is referred to as ”apple from China”. But the colour is still named ”orange”.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  It's fallen ever more out of use, but when I was young the colour orange was still often called "brandgult" -- "fire-yellow" -- in Swedish. (And the fruit still is an "apelsin".)
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >"fire-yellow" That reminds me how my first car was blue-green, or turquoise, to me, but other people would often call it "green". The official color name according to the manufacturer was "Tahitian Green", I think. Under sodium lights, it would look blue to me, but under other lighting, I considered it to be a blue-green. But it never made any sense to me to consider it primarily green.
  - dorchadas 5y ago
    Something similar in Irish -- orange was (and still is, among older native speakers in the Gaeltacht) flannbhuí, translating literally as 'blood red yellow'. This is actually the word used for the color on the Irish flag in their constitution. Then English influence and learners who directly port from English came along and now oráiste, which was originally only the name of the fruit, has replaced it sadly.
- kolinko 5y ago
  In Poland the fruit is “pomarańcza”, and the colour is “pomarańczowy” :)
tasogare 5y ago
Interesting phenomenon concerning the name. It's the reverse of what happened to naperon which became an aperon in English.
- alberto_ol 5y ago
  https://www.etymonline.com/word/apron https://www.etymonline.com/word/apron https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange#etymonline_v_7106 https://www.etymonline.com/word/orange#etymonline_v_7106
Gravityloss 5y ago
What does that have to do with "seeing the color". Of course there are words for many exact things that are typical examples of some colors. People couldn't see a particular mid-dark red before Ferrari? Bianchi celeste color? Surf green Stratocaster? Or maybe when Pantone launched their color reference system, people then suddenly started seeing them? Think how walking in a meadow must have felt after seeing all the Pantone colors with their codes, and then really seeing the flowers' colors for the first time?! This doesn't mean people didn't see the color beforehand. It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily.
- bildung 5y ago
  > It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily. This is usually a sign that it wasn't the article's author who misunderstood ;) Physically, people obviously could see the same frequencies. But what to make of the raw perception has a cultural aspect - after all, the whole band from 400 nm to 780 nm is continuous, and we are able to perceive the complete range[0], so the color categories we use have to be arbitrary to a degree. So seeing here means consciously differentiating, not physically perceiving. Anecdote: I was working in a print shop during university. After a few years of consciously comparing small hue differences, I became almost offended if someone in class talked about a "purple" line in a graph that was clearly magenta to me. I couldn't care less a few years before. [0] = many parts indirectly, though, e.g. yellow is not a color we can see directly with the cones alone, it is processed first.
  - Gravityloss 5y ago
    That's just about caring or differentiating about relatively small difference. Not about not being able to see the whole color. Which is in the title. Recently a lot of people forwarded the idea that ancient people couldn't see blue. If you look at Egyptian artefacts, they sure have a lot of symmetrical blue accents. If they really couldn't see the color, then by accident they should have at least at times picked some other color to the left piece than the right piece?
    - 5y ago
cblconfederate 5y ago
Purple had a name in ancient greek (porfyra) and egyptian times. The color was named after (or vice versa) the sea snail that makes it I think the whole naming of "orange" had to do with the fact that the need arose to actually discriminate the fruit you wanted by its color
drewcoo 5y ago
Though it would rhyme with "orange," there was not a norange: https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-norange.html https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-norange.html
jjk166 5y ago
Orange (red-yellow) is a tertiary color. Most tertiary colors are named for things. Chartreuse (yellow-green) is named for a liquor and was first used in 1764, much more recently than orange. Azure (blue-cyan) is named for lapis-lazuli. Rose (magenta-red) is named for the flower. Turquoise (green-cyan) is named for the gem, with its etymology only in the 17th century. Violet (magenta-blue) is actually unique in that it's the only tertiary color that isn't named for something. Its name comes from the proto-Indo-European word for purple. (In this case, purple is the color named for a thing). The process continues for further subdivided color. Most quarternary colors don't have distinct well-accepted names, but some like scarlet, fuschia, and aquamarine are reasonably accepted. If you've gotten through life calling things yellow-green instead of using the word chartreuse, you know how people got through life without using the word orange.

danmur 5y ago

It took decades to fashion them out of tables

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]