I have studied Ancient Hebrew and Classical Greek in Under Grad and Grad School. I really always struggle with this idea that they didn't see blue. They just described different aspects of things based on their world view. For instance the sky was a solid object that was made of a highly reflexive bronze. That bronze isn't blue wasn't the issue it was the so called shine.
The people were much more physical in their writing styles. Take "Apple of my eye." That was an ancient terms. It means that when you look closely at an apple you see your own eyes' reflections. It meant that they keep their eyes close to you.
This still supports your argument, but the wikipedia entry has a different meaning of the phrase "Apple of my eye".
From the wiki entry[0]: "Its meaning does indeed derive from an expression signifying the pupil of the eye, one of the most sensitive parts of the body. For example, one can tolerate an eyelash on the white of his eye, but let it barely touch the pupil, and everything else is of secondary importance."
It's kind of funny though, I always assumed it was like saying, "out of all the apples around me, you're the one that I notice, the one apple I see with my eye". And all of these definitions kind of hint at the same point. Definitely a misunderstood quote.
I wasn't really aware that "taupe"[1] was a colour until some Windows theme used that name. Similarly "coral" until it became an HTML colour -- it just wasn't common usage. I suspect a lot of these names originated in the art/fashion world, and entered computing via desktop publishing / UI design pros.
I heard that but WE have blue sky, and yellow flowers. We can't say we didn't have yellow till we transferred the dye from a yellow flower to a fabric? We have documentation of dye millennium before Homer and Cave paintings nearly forty thousands years before them. https://zady.com/features/the-history-of-fabric-dye
Though there was some blue dye before Homer, it was very rare. The Mycenaeans had some, but Homer was ~400 years after the Bronze Age collapse where the techniques to make most things were lost.
I can't tell you how much this consumed my mind after hearing this story on Radio Lab. Thanks for continuing the dialog. I find this stuff super fascinating.
>Yes but the Greek Statues were painted. Pretty fascinating stuff
Homer is from the very beginning of what is commonly considered "Ancient Greece." Writing was being reintroduced into Greek society and he wrote down the oral tales that had been kicking around. This is what the sculptures around then looked like
Well if you dig in a little more the question of who and when get really fuzzy regarding Homer. Also there is still the long held idea regarding Homer's blindness.
I find many scholars to be academically lazy when it comes to things outside their area of expertise and don't do simple research. For example last weeks story of DNA of Canaanites from the time of Exodus is still in Lebanon. Many ran the idea that the scripture account was proven wrong when in fact if they did a 2 minute search of the word Canaanites and see they were never wiped out or destroyed.
Judges 3:5-6 The Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 5So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 5The sons of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; 5And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: 5But they settled among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
6They took their daughters in marriage and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
So I find the arguements against Homer being blind very weak in regards to what we think humans are capable of doing. One visiting Professor of much clout was talking about the impossibility of the human mind to memorize and compose without writing something as large as Homer's works. Well doing a 60 minute research on memorization and oral tradition we can see how people memorized huge quantities of materials. Also it is clear that the fall of Troy was in the 12th Century BCE and Illad was written around 8th Century BCE due to memorization clues and the use of the 8th Century Greek alphabet and hints to a oral history. http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_homer_iliad.html
I could go on for hours :( But the use of Homer and his writings makes it difficult to see how human catalog of color missed out blue.
Heck we never had orange till reciently before it was red-yellow. This is why red heads are not called orange heads.
> The earliest recorded use of the word in English is from the 13th century and referred to the fruit. The earliest attested use of the word in reference to the color is from the 16th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word) (to lazy myself (hypocrite) to get further references)
>Many ran the idea that the scripture account was proven wrong when in fact if they did a 2 minute search of the word Canaanites and see they were never wiped out or destroyed.
God ordered all Canaanites exterminated in Deuteronomy and Joshua tells the story of that extermination. Their reappearance in the following book proves scripture wrong without any help from scientists.
>But the use of Homer and his writings makes it difficult to see how human catalog of color missed out blue.
The human catalog didn't, the Greeks of Homer's time probably did. If you put the Iliad as being written in the 8th century, indigo dye wasn't being produced in India yet, and Egyptian Blue would have been incredibly scarce given the state of Egypt at the time.
> God ordered all Canaanites exterminated in Deuteronomy and Joshua tells the story of that extermination. Their reappearance in the following book proves scripture wrong without any help from scientists.
1. Joshua tells the story of that extermination.
WHERE does it say they we exterminated? As someone that has read a ton I have no idea where this idea started from. Probably some modern non-academic "bible expert."
Joshua 16:10 They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.
Sample of Lazy Academics or Research. Theology is a serious discipline and is pretty addicting. I know many PhD and Professors who were never Christians or Jews and just love this stuff because of the discipline.
Also if you don't read much ancient writings and especially biographies and histories you can easily get caught in a trap. Taking a modern world mindset to those reads renders them void and mute. Just like the colors many other things are very different to the mindset of Ancient Near East and Greece then today.
I can tell you I am absolutely shocked and disappointed in most modern Christian leaders and non-academic "Biblical Scholars." I just figure they don't actually read or study anything. They just listen to opinions with no academic or logical mindset and just run with emotional ideas. This is why their is Hermeneutics (academic discipline of interpenetration of literature) that many preachers rail against. This is part of why we have the crazy lack of morals and principles in the modern Christians here in America. So I don't blame you for just figuring Joshua exterminated Canaanites.
>WHERE does it say they we exterminated? As someone that has read a ton I have no idea where this idea started from. Probably some modern non-academic "bible expert."
Deuteronomy commands the Israelites to 7:2-3
>and when the LORD thy God shall deliver them up before thee, and thou shalt smite them; then thou shalt utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son
And 20:16-17
>Howbeit of the cities of these peoples, that the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth but thou shalt utterly destroy them: the Hittite, and the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee;
The following book is Joshua which focuses on how Joshua's conquest were a result of his following the commandments so well. Any discrepancy found is because all of this is like the Iliad, fiction loosely based on real events.
Yes, I have read this. It's part of what ended the belief in Christianity I had. Yes, I realize this is how war was carried out basically forever. That is why I reject any set of morales or principles that ever view them as tolerable.
Not exterminated just the Land was conqueered. Yes God commanded the extermination, as well as bashing the heads of babies onto rocks, but it didn't happen. No where in the scriptures of the Hebrews does it say they were exterminated.
Joshua 16:10 They did not dislodge the Canaanites living in Gezer; to this day the Canaanites live among the people of Ephraim but are required to do forced labor.
Yes Israel came and kicked out many people groups to settle in Israel but they never exterminated. The Old Testament is full of stories of neighbors being a pain to Israel.
No, exterminated. The book describes the killing of many complete cities, like Jericho in 6:21
> And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword.
Ai in 8:24
>And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword
And the Gezer you keep clinging to in 10:33
>Then Horam king of Gezer came up to help Lachish; and Joshua smote him and his people, until he had left him none remaining.
I have no idea why it later says they didn't slay them. There is still enough description of putting everyone to the sword to call it extermination.
> There is still enough description of putting everyone to the sword to call it extermination.
BUT still today there is DNA evidence that they were alive just as written in JOSHUA and in JUDGES. Also they did not kill everyone and took wives like Rahab who was in David's genealogy? This was an easy 5 minute search to answer "Did the Hebrew scriptures say they were exterminated?" "Were Cananites mentioned further on in the scriptures?" "Are they till alive after the conquering of the lands?"
Okay I usually enjoy this but I guess there is personal issues involved that doesn't allow you to even allow you to be skeptical and find a logical answer and just are a cynic? Sorry to have bothered you if you even reading this.
A) I pointed out that the DNA of Canaanites still in existence, as per new article this year is consistent with the Hebrew scriptures.
B) People stated this disproved the Hebrew scriptures since they are said to be exterminated which is counter to my stance and evidence in Joshua and Judges.
C) Your statement Joshua was the story of Canaanites extermination, but MY evidence was that Canaanites are still alive in Joshua as of its writing and also in Judges. This would mean that it is no surprise that there is DNA evidence to this day.
D) You define Exterminate to mean destroying MOST of the cities and most of the Canaanites. This would still account for why we have DNA evidence of Canaanites.
E) Your conclusion is that the history record of the Hebrew scriptures is wrong because there is DNA evidence of them today and they were Exterminated but your definition stats that they were not completely wiped out but mostly killed, which is consistent to warfare in that time period and era?
E) We have a logical error and sorry to say this but I don't believe it is on my end. There is something once again not allowing you to even be open to the possibility that in this DNA evidence doesn't disprove Hebrew scriptures.
Hope you have a good day, sorry to bring up something hurtful possibly?
I personally think the entire book of Joshua is not a factual account of history, very little information outside of the Bible supports it's claim. Treating it like a historical document that can be disproved is nonsense. The scientific article this started on wanted to discover what happened to the Canaanites, and only mentioned the Bible to say it was one of the few records of the period and that they were exterminated in it.
On the other matter, the Bible states that extermination is the goal, and describes the campaign to do so in detail. That it later says there may have been pockets they missed doesn't mean Bible scholars are making the entire thing up.
I discovered that there were roughly three times as many colo[u]rs in the USA vs the UK when I moved 20 years ago. But thanks to globalization I bet they have Aqua and Taupe in Blighty now...
The sky's colour varies greatly. Blue, blue-white, white, light grey, dark grey, yellow, red, purple, black-with-whitish-pinpoints. Probably more, but those are just the ones off the top of my head.
It might also be some quirk of literary culture or a reflection of the paucity of our sources. We know Greeks painted their sculptures, quite brightly, according to some reconstructions. This suggests they must have had some way to communicate about quite a few colours.
>The common view today is that white light is colourless and arises from the sum of all the hues of the spectrum, whereas black is its absence.
Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.
The infinite basis that forms the spectrum is different from the basis of three cones (receptive to bands of long, medium, and short wavelengths respectively), which itself is different from the basis formed by color opponencies (white/black, red/green, blue/yellow). Since the projections that go from one of these spaces to the next are not 1:1, to speak precisely we should not identify a spectrum with a color experience. (And, of course, because of other complications that this skips over like lateral inhibition and habituation.)
Physics talks about spectra and wavelengths. Retinas talk certain bands of wavelengths. Only brains talk color. The spectra that usually make brains experience white can be separated into spectra that make brains experience other color experiences.
> Pet peeve: white is itself a color experience. It's not colorless.
The way that I thought about color before being educated in the properties of light was to think of white as colorless. It's the thing that's easiest to add color to in a subtractive color model (e.g. using crayons paints as a child). It doesn't represent my science-based understanding, but I wouldn't be surprised to observe someone looking at something white and saying "Huh, it needs some color".
To expand on your point, retinas talk a limited number of overlapping spectral responses. That's why we can have an essentially identical perception of spectral yellow and a mix of red and green light.
To temper your point just a bit, even though yellow light and red+green light look the same when viewed directly, you can still tell the difference. For instance, in the way the light reflects off different materials, or by chromatic aberration with corrective lenses. This is why R+G+B LED lighting is not good enough for illumination and why some better bulbs instead use UV LED + phosphors.
Why would it look "wine dark", whatever that means, and not green? If other cultures describe blues as just different shades of green, why would Homer describe it as red - or maybe black?
Also, if the literal translation is actually "wine face sea", not "wine dark sea" [1], are we really sure we have any idea what this means?
You're all overthinking it. When you are on a boat and you enter deep water in the Aegean, the color does become very dark like thick red wine, different to the blue waters you see from the coast.
I once had a similar discussion about a phrase that was something like "smooth soft stone," describing a surface someone was walking on. It's a straightforward description of a sensation: if you're walking on a stone surface in bare feet, smooth stone feels much softer than rough stone. If you know how it feels, the phrase sounds perfectly smooth and natural, but if you've never experienced it, or don't remember experiencing it as a child, you might think the phrase is meant to sound jarring paradoxical, instead of gently referencing a paradox doesn't even feel paradoxical to us because it agrees with how we perceive the world.
Absolutely. Knowing the phrase "wine dark sea" and its associated discussion, exactly the same struck me when I saw it. Plus reflecting on "verbal" people maybe missing something.
I don't understand why people think "wine-dark" could mean "purple".
Just parse it like normal. This grammatical construction means "as dark as wine"... blue green and red things can all be dark or light.
Besides, can you think of a dark blue liquid the ancient Greeks would have access to? Wine is pretty much the closest thing to a black liquid they'd have laying around the house.
So basically the greeks didn't cleanly separate hue from the other aspects of the surface appearance of things. So that if something was glimmering, or dark, that was considered to be as important or more important than the hue, for the purposes of description.
In Japanese, "青" (ao) traditionally covered certain shades of both blue and green (blue sky, blue traffic lights, blue apples and many other plants).
"緑" (midori) is more solidly green, coming from a root word used to describe flourishing trees. I think that it's still considered a shade of ao. They'll sometimes use a phonetic rendering of English "green", and I'm not really clear on the difference in meaning there.
Yes, that was an entertaining book. Some of the interesting things I remember (and I might not remember them exactly correctly):
- Most languages developed a word for the color red before any other colors. Probably because blood is red and uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.
- Blue is rarely seen in nature, and so many cultures wouldn't feel the need to distinguish between purple and blue, because neither was seen very often. There is one obvious exception though, the blue sky. Although anecdotal, the author used some precious scientific equipment, his daughter, to perform an experiment. He purposely avoiding telling his daughter the color of the sky, yet taught her the color of many physical objects. Once he was sure she knew all the colors he finally popped the question on a clear day: "What color is the sky?" His daughter seemed confused and eventually decided that the sky was white.
> Most languages developed a word for the color red before
> any other colors. Probably because blood is red and
> uniquely present at the most dramatic times of life.
Red has high contrast against the backgrounds of natural scenes (greens, blues, browns, etc) and is distinguishable in a variety of lighting conditions. For this reason it is one of the standard "warning" colors used by the natural world. Moreover, plants have co-opted red for positive signaling, too: many fruits and berries are red. If that weren't enough, many mammals (including humans) use red hues for signaling emotional and sexual states. Discriminating red hues was apparently important enough that primates "re-evolved" a red-detecting cone in the retina, despite ancestral mammals losing a similar one earlier in evolutionary history.
Was his daughter kept strictly isolated from all other people, or were all the other people she came in contact with also careful not to mention blue around her?
If not, it's likely she ran across the word blue in conversations she had with others, in books and stories, on television, movies, songs, etc.
I am very skeptical of how much of value could be drawn from such an experiment unless the person in question is completely isolated. Even then, that kind of isolation is likely to have deep psychological consequences that could taint the experiment even then. That's not to mention the severe and possibly insurmountable ethical problems such a study would run in to these days.
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The greek language is not dead, it is still spoken by about 15 mil. people worldwide. "Porfyro" is the deep red color that can be frequently experienced in esp. greek orthodox churches (even in apparell dating many hundreds of years), and "Glauco" is the shiny blue of the aegean sea that made the greek islands famous worldwide.
The words that the greeks used (and still use) have the purpose of describing the natural world, not of scientificaly defining colors according to a theory of vision.
Even the modern theory of color vision acknowledges the principles of color constancy and color adaptation.
If the Greeks saw colors completely differently than we modern Westerners do, then their artistic representations of color, like in frescos and painted pottery, would look quite bizarre to us. Is that the case?
No, since they produced representative art (not abstract art as far as we can tell) they tried to make water watery and the sky sky-y.
Yes, since language reflects which paints we pick up, and you can see this from greek sculpture (the victorians didn't manage to get all the color off all the sculpture): their color choices were more garish than we would use today. In fact their color choices are closer to those of hound sculpture. And note that the bronze-age aryan invaders to India and Persia also invaded Greece at the same time...
In other words, "yes, but not as much as you might think"
>their color choices were more garish than we would use today.
Maybe that was just an artistic choice.
The reason I am pushing on this is that there is a widespread idea, especially in academia, that people in different cultures see the world completely differently than we modern Westerners do. But that is simply not true. On most basic things, like the fact that human beings live in space, have to eat, and so on, different cultures agree.
Do you read Classical Greek? Have you read Gladstone's book? In my case the answer to both is yes. And, with a Hindu Indian parent and much time spent there through my life I am quite aware of the ancient cultural ties between those two cultures.
There is plenty of work in cultural anthropology, biology, and casting that people are incredibly alike in most ways even in regards to things that appear to be learned, and yet also have elements that are strongly dissimilar despite seemingly being innate. What about people with innate absolute orientation and no concept of right/left. That's not a "historical" phenomenon but a contemporary one.
Sometimes things can be scientific and not ideological you know.
Text really isn't the best medium to discuss color perception. This Vox video summarizing the research of linguistic anthropologists is much more clear: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMqZR3pqMjg
The people were much more physical in their writing styles. Take "Apple of my eye." That was an ancient terms. It means that when you look closely at an apple you see your own eyes' reflections. It meant that they keep their eyes close to you.