Sure, color corresponds to a physical property, so obviously there were things of different colors (sunlight, water, rainbows, rocks) before life developed. Eve

Sure, color corresponds to a physical property, so obviously there were things of different colors (sunlight, water, rainbows, rocks) before life developed. Everything has a color. Color vision (or just ability to differentiate 2 or more frequencies of light) could have evolved a soon as there were forms of life for who this was advantageous - potentially as simple as an ocean organism orientating itself towards sunlight. It seems the co-evolution of the property of color and color detection ability in plant and animal species, must logically have followed a basic ability to differentiate non-evolved natural colors.