Ancient Greeks Couldn't See Blue DEBUNKED Once and For All

The ancient Greeks and all ancient people couldn't see blue. Were they all colour blind? Let's debunk this myth once and for all.
Links to the videos I'm responding too. Check out the channels!
ASAPscience: • Why The Ancient Greeks...
Why Files: • Why Ancient People Did...
Inquire: • Why Can't Greeks See B...
Garrett Robinson: • Ancient Cultures Didn'...
Ancient Greece Revisited: • Were the Ancient Greek... (Nice video)
Vsauce2: • Why Is Blue Rare? (Great video overall, but uses the animals are not blue excuse too)
More content on Ancient Greek Colors
• Learn 10 colours in An...
Probably the best video on this topic out there: • Can you see blue if yo...
VERY GOOD RECOMMENDED ARTICLE on the topic: www.slowboring.com/p/greeks-b...
Contents of This Video
- Intro
1 - The structure of the argument
2 - There is no Blue and Yet It's Everywhere
3 - Ancient Egyptian Blue and Trade
4 - Blue Pigment Scientific Analysis
5 - Dynamics of Colour Perception in Communication
6 - Where The Ancient Greeks Colour Blind?
7 - From The Mind of The Ancients
8 - Light Vs Darkness
9 - A Sky of Bronze And Iron
10 - The Hexadecimal Code
11 - Science of Linguistic Color Perception: The Himba Experiment
12 - Athena's Eyes: cognitive differences
13 - Animals Are Not Blue, Neither Are Screens
14 - Colour, A Visual Construct of Our Mind
- Conclusion
#blue #ancientgreece #myth

[@Senior-Donjusticia]

Fun fact: not only were the ancients incapable of seeing blue, but they were also incapable of tasting water, feeling liquid, hearing waves, or smelling seaweed and salt. This lead to mass drownings as entire populations just bumbled into the ocean, not even realizing it was there.

[@sheev2829]

Lmao

[@arthurfields9575]

Also they lived in a black, white, and grey world too. Color wasn’t around until the invention of colorized TV and photos. (I’m obviously being sarcastic). This argument/statement has been a ridiculous one to me. Blue is found in nature, the beautiful sky, the ocean, flowers, butterflies, rocks, people’s eyes, berries, birds, bird eggs, fish, and other different animals.

[@morganmcallister2001]

They did manage to build hovercrafts with three rows of oars and a pointy front that they would ram other hovercrafts with though.

[@user-rx5dh4le5x]

That’s not what I think that’s what people mean when they say “ancient greeks didn’t see the color blue”, instead i think they argue that because the lack of the concept of blue in Ancient Greek scripts that not that they weren’t able to see the color blue as we see it now but they described blue in other ways.

[@Senior-Donjusticia]

@@user-rx5dh4le5x True. What I am saying is obviously hyperbolic for the purpose of comedy. Nevertheless, I agree with the points Metatron brought up in this video and believe that even this argument is ridiculous.

[@texasbeast239]

I found a Dickens novel in which firearms were never mentioned. Therefore, guns must not have existed in Victorian England. 🙄

[@nicktecky55]

I bet they didn't mention spacecraft either😉

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@nicktecky55 well those didn't exist at the time either. No guns and no spacecraft in Victorian England, no sir

[@nicktecky55]

@@marcogenovesi8570 Are you sure? H G Wells wrote about one that went to the moon... Gotcha!

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@nicktecky55 everybody knows HG Wells is part of the moon hoax conspiracy

[@sanjivjhangiani3243]

Maybe there were guns, but the Victorians could not see them!

[@almost_harmless]

Reminds me of an old joke. The scientist that was observing spiders. He had managed to make it jump when he shouted at it, but as he pulled off a leg, and then more, until the spider could not jump anymore, he observed in his journal: "When it loses its legs, it turns deaf". arriving at a conclusion that does not have all the facts taken into account is, unfortunately, not new.

[@Glumpsy]

At a market: - What are these berries? - Blackcurrant. - But why are they red? - Because they are green.

[@RobertoDeMundo]

Lmao I'm just imagining a legless spider just sitting there enduring that scientists bs

[@Vampirzaehnchen]

I want to add in something for the green honey. A german beekeeper once sold actually blue honey. Their bees got their "nectar" from a nearby candy factory, where they fed on blue coloured candy syrup. The honey was safe to eat but with a fancy colour. Also, we do know that depending on what plants the bees have available, the colour of the honey will change, so green honey could be a naturally possible thing. Just don't ask me what diet the bees would have to have for green honey. :D

[@Daikon_Micucci]

Green honey probably was probably made by bees that pollinated olive trees, or something.

[@pogmonke5217]

One time they ate m&m’s and it made their honey different colours.

[@melissarivera8236]

Some flowers have blue pollen, so yellow honey plus blue pollen equals green honey, maybe? I’m not a bee expert, but seems possible.

[@k9wolf07]

Green honey means its fresh or raw, older honey tends to crystalize and the taste can be affected. Greeks and Romans often ate Green Cheese which are still white in color but it means that it is fresh and hasn't been aged. Think of the word greenhorn as meaning young and inexperienced. Its not literally referring to the color.

[@melissarivera8236]

@@k9wolf07Interesting! I knew that about cheese but not about honey.

[@matthewdee6023]

When I came across this in QI, I assumed they meant "no direct translatable word for blue, it would be in the context." I never ONCE thought the the Greeks couldn't see blue though. Seriously?!?

[@iamfishmind]

yeah same, iirc QI said that it related more to language than anything, but didn't go into a lot of detail.

[@tarnw3301]

Same.

[@AShoutIntoTheVoid]

I’ve had friends try to argue with me that the Greeks couldn’t see blue because of the pervasiveness of the myth. Catchy psudo-science Is insidious.

[@woodrunner51]

There is actual basis for this, but i think these people missinterpreted it. Looking at human history everywhere in the world colors appear in documents in a specific order. First black-white, then red (blood), then yellow and green (some parts of the world got green first, some hit yellow first. Depending on where they lived). And all got blue last, usually at the time when they were able to produce it. The study that discovered this didnt say they couldnt see it. But didnt distinquish it from the environment as a significant color

[@rebeccahicks2392]

Yeah, like how people nowadays can see cyan even though most people don't know its name.

[@scarecrow2097]

They say “ancients couldn’t see blue” meanwhile… > there’s around 7+ original Greek words for blue and even more today. >we literally have found a bunch of ceramics from ancient Greece painted blue using azurite.

[@rustyhowe3907]

Yeah and wall murals, jewelry, clothing etc etc etc etc... Aaaand they also have easy access to water, particularly ocean.

[@jeffthemercenary]

Also most Greeks : literally a maritime nation

[@anna9072]

Thank you. I was pretty sure the “ancient people didn’t see blue” was crap, but I didn’t have sufficient motivation to actually research it myself. Glad you did the work on this!

[@RegebroRepairs]

I never heard anyone make that claim. They didn't have a WORD for blue. That's not the same thing as not seeing it.

[@GuinessOriginal]

@@RegebroRepairsif you don’t have a definition for it it’s difficult to recognise what you “see”. If you can’t communicate what you see, how does anyone know?

[@RegebroRepairs]

@@GuinessOriginal "If you don’t have a definition for it it’s difficult to recognise what you “see”. " Nope. "If you can’t communicate what you see, how does anyone know?" Different issue.

[@stephena1196]

​@@RegebroRepairsthey did have a word for blue: they called it the name for lapis lazuli, like people used the fruit orange to name the colour.

[@RegebroRepairs]

​@@stephena1196Good point.

[@hodgeelmwood8677]

I always assumed that "wine-dark sea" simply meant "it's as dark as wine." Never thought it referred to a specific color.

[@morganseppy5180]

Agreed. Never heard this myth in the wild, only in YT vids and other pop media.

[@HitBoxMaster]

Most intelligent people would assume so

[@TheMaulam12345]

isnt dark as wine reference to a color?

[@morganseppy5180]

@@TheMaulam12345 what color is the ocean that a sailor calls it "wine-dark"?

[@mattelder1971]

@@morganseppy5180 Let me guess, you've never been out to the deep ocean? I have when I was in the Navy, and I have seen the sea there be a very dark purple color.

[@benjaminwatt2436]

This myth of the ancients not seeing the color blue is just one example of how our society believes the ancients were dumb. I'd like to see a whole video about the misconception of people being much smarter today than they were millennia ago. As far as written history goes, people seem to have always be logical, rational, creative and intuitive.

[@hankvandenakker4271]

EXACTLY. IMAGINE BUILDING FIRES,SHEKTERS, SNARES, TOOLS, CLOTHES - FROM SCRATCH. BUT IMAGINE THE POWER A ZIPPO LIGHTER, FUEL & FLINTS WOULD GIVE YOU 1,000 YEARS AGO... YOU COULD'VE RULED A TRIBE ON THAT ABILITY ALONE.

[@mandowarrior123]

Modern people are ignorant and have never seen a historic bronze cannon in modern times if unpreserved. Sky blue to blue green patina depending on the bronze. Happens particularly quick in near sea areas such as hmm, greece and if its exposed such as hmm roofs or statues.

[@E_Clip]

Physically our brain is not different at all from the people who lived 2k years ago, so their capacity for intelligence was the same as ours. Obviously they didn't have all the knowledge we do now, but it doesn't mean they were less intelligent than us.

[@enderoctanus]

We are much more specialized today, so it's both true and false in different ways.

[@piccalillipit9211]

NO ITS NOT. Its an example of the understanding of linguistics. language creates your perception of the world. If you don't have a WORD for blue - you literally do not perceive blue - I've done experiments on this as an author on psychology. Many languages don't have a word for BROWN. They call it dark orange. For 2 years every time i looked at a brown object, I said "Dark Orange" in my head. I now no longer perceive brown. Im sitting at a mahogany desk, it's most definitely NOT brown. Its orange, to dark orange with tiny streaks of black. Your perception of the world is directly linked to your vocabulary.

[@kanrakucheese]

There's another problem with the claims you didn't touch: Honey's color varies based on what the bees worked with. Greenish honey is entirely possible!

[@Davoda2]

Thx I didn't know it :) Tho I was expecting Metatron to say that technically our eyes with with RBG, well, long medium and long wavelength receptors.

[@poil8351]

well french bees recently had rainbow coloured honey from chemical dyes.

[@annasolovyeva1013]

Greek bees thrive on greek pine. It's brown.

[@Kevin-jb2pv]

Could you imagine how terrifying and disorienting it would be if the trees and grass just melted into the sky because you couldn't see it?

[@unematrix]

even in black and white pictures you can tell the difference. Seeing stuff in just 1 colour wouldn't make it invisible. Just as on black and white images stuff with the same colour isn't invisible.

[@rarapas]

Thank you for the Minoan paintings, I was infuriated by those videos as at least the dolphins are PROMINENT and so striking! Anyone with 5 seconds of research could have find blue has been used throughout ancient history. Hello from Greece :)

[@Alx1744]

Allå!‎ :)

[@MellonVegan]

Wait, people actually claim that the ancients couldn't even SEE blue? I thought it was just a discussion on categorisation, like populations and even individual people disagreeing where the borders between distinct colours are. I saw this as a linguistic curiosity, nothing more.

[@juanausensi499]

That how it started, then some literal-minded people saw it and tried to look smart

[@arthas640]

There are some idiots who claim that because they dont have evidence of some cultures having clear, easily translatable words for specific colors that that means they couldnt differentiate them. I once saw someone claim in an article that because some culture used the same word for purple and blue that it meant they couldnt tell the difference and thus had some color blindness, which is retarded since ancient cultures often jsut called purple "blue red" or something similar since purple is actually pretty uncommon in nature except for sunsets and some flowers.

[@rustyhowe3907]

@@arthas640 Just imagine what these same idiots would be like if they read Old English, their little minds would be blown away.🤣

[@arthas640]

@@rustyhowe3907 yeah, in old English and in Norse they'd often use poetic terms for colors. In one of the Beowulf stories they use a phrase like describing something as "seafoam" for "off white" colored and describe something dark blue by calling it "whale bath" or something like that with "whale bath" or "whale pool" describing the dark waters of the North Atlantic as opposed to the light blue or turquoise of shallower waters. They dont always make much sense as direct translations since they often describe situational objects like combining night time imagery combined with nouns to mean dark blue, dark red, dark green, etc. or might combine it with imagery about morning or dusk to mean reddish tinged green/blue/etc.

[@rustyhowe3907]

@@arthas640 That's really interesting to learn, thank you for sharing that! It's always a problem even with modern language translations where the more poetic terms make no sense in direct translations or interpretations to other languages.

[@Proud2bGreek1]

This is the first time that I've ever heard this ridiculous claim, well done for disproving it.

[@metatronyt]

My pleasure and thanks for watching

[@GuitarsRockForever]

Me too, it would be so stupid, even worse than flat earthers.

[@thebelfastvikingmartinbrow3603]

That makes two of us. Who would even believe rubbish like it.

[@shinybreloom4027]

yeah because nobody has made this argument before. he's hearting all the people who agree with him to ride the algorithm. furthermore, most of the people he brings up are saying 'people can't see colors' like how people did 'the dress' meme. They can obviously physically see them, this is just semantics.

[@____________838]

Just be thankful that this debunking was the first time you’ve seen this “theory”…

[@markm4952]

My understanding of this fact was that blue just wasn't it's own color, it was kind of like a shade of green. Just like how light blue and dark blue are distinguishable as different shades but we consider them both to be blue Edit: just got to the section of the video where you are talking about this. I'll have to thank my professor for explaining this idea to me correctly the first time.

[@mdt105]

Funnily enough, in Afghanistan, American/Western troops *actually had* this exact problem with blue and green. There were cases where local Afghans would report Taliban fighters travelling in green vehicles, and the fighters would escape because the colour the locals described as green, the American soldiers would have described as blue. Clearly, nobody was actually seeing different colours, it was a combination of the two groups categorising colours differently and translation issues.

[@bobsbuurgers3714]

​@@mdt105Stop making stuff up. I was in Afghanistan for a year and we never had this problem. There was always a language barrier but to say it was colors is ludicrous... Lol We all know the sky is blue and the grass is green right?. Then I can just point to a color and ask them, "yes or no" until we find the right color. We are Marines, we adapt, we improvise, we will find a way to confirm blue or green just by pointing to our uniform or to the sky genius... Try again. Lmao😂

[@maxinehardy9411]

@@bobsbuurgers3714 oh shit we got a tough guy here :o

[@ravinraven6913]

didn't help the only culture to be able to come up with the color blue was the Egyptians. So they had to use their own entomology. Which until after the 1800s, most people just called blue, grey instead.

[@trapez77]

A better example would be how people call cyan(blue+green) blue, and people call chartreuse(green+yellow) green

[@mikeglass7993]

Wow. So thorough and well done. Also, the presenter make strong and definitive counter-points without being disrespectful to the specific creators he is debunking. Powerful presentation and excellent and definitive research.

[@metatronyt]

Thank you Mike

[@user-pw4qm9nc1y]

Brilliant work sir!🎉

[@vojtik135]

Ancient people didn't see blue? One of the most striking archeological remains from ancient time is the Gate of Ishtar which is rather blue. Like was it invisible?

[@benjaminwatt2436]

It was the ancient version of a screen glass door

[@familykletch5156]

Like Wile E Coyote painting a tunnel on a cliff for the Road Runner.

[@melissapinol7279]

I have read ancient Middle Eastern writings pretty extensively. The Goddesses Inanna and Ishtar, Sumerian and Babylonian forms of basically the same deity of love and war and the Queen of Heaven, were both strongly associated with the color blue for example as the Queen of the "lapis Lazuli sky". The Ishtar Gate is only one example. Yes, I believe that these people recognized and considered the color blue to be sacred.

[@theflowerhead]

If this was true it doesn't mean it literally didn't exist, you would see it differently like some colour blind people. At least the vid I saw a little bit back. But I didn't buy into it so I never watched more. Did some people say it actually didn't exist? Cause if so that's funny af.

[@jbm628]

I teach ancient literature and this is a problem many students have when reading these texts. I have to keep on reminding my students that they cannot read the texts as if they were from our time and culture. This is an excellent example of a difference that is simple but yet complicated at the same time. Well done!

[@Noblebird02]

Is it true that ancient Hebrew lacks a word for blue eyes? Archaeological digs have found blue dye in Israel in Timna and apparently it was made by woad

[@-_YouMayFind_-]

exactly my teacher told us the same.

[@zzycatch]

Exactly true! I learned in university, that we must view ancient texts through a postmodernist lens, as the original authors secretly intended!

[@Thorenhard]

wonder how this can even be a problem in university. this is basic high school level knowledge. have they never read a poem?

[@jameswells554]

It's called a lack of imagination, coupled with a low comprehension of the English Language. Thank you No Dummy Left Behind.

[@jemm113]

Another example of a language not having a distinct word for something is how Japanese treats blue and green. Before modern Japanese "ao", alongside other descriptive words, was used to describe shades of blue, gray, green, and violet. "Ao" also is used to denote freshness. Similar happened with "aka", meaning red, was used to describe reds, yellows, oranges, etc. Black and white, "kuro" and "shiro" were used to describe shades and other colors, even some yellows were categorized under "shiro". "Midori" for green was introduced in the Heian period for green, but wasn't widespread was was usually confined to flower language. Thus modern day names for various shades of green frequently use "ao" in the name. And even then it took till after WWII for it to be added to the wider color lexicon. Traffic lights were described as "ao" as "midori" was still not in widespread use. And eventually words to further separate the color categories would arrive for yellow, brown, etc.

[@stevetournay6103]

Fascinating how near each other phonetically the Japanese words for black and white and the Italian ones for dark and light are. Coincidence, surely?

[@porrasm]

As a Finnish person the sky really isn’t blue during winter. Weeks can go by without even a shred of the blue sky being seen because of constant cloud beds. Also in northern parts the sun disappears entirely for the darkest part of winter causing the sky to be dark for months.

[@stonedude77]

That's why yall have tiny weiners.

[@itzakehrenberg3449]

So? You've see blue skies in Finland before, haven't you?

[@checkle1]

lol have you seen Monty Python's Erik the Viking?

[@redraven1604]

Um.. well no one goes to Finland for a Sun tan mate, somewhat different in Greece.

[@stevetournay6103]

Dark. But...is it wine-dark? 😁

[@sleestack13]

Thank you for this. This is one of those "scientific" myths that has made me shake my head for most of my life. One of the other ones is when people say that the Native Americans couldn't physically see the "massive" boats from the English and Spaniards that were sailing toward them in the 1400's and 1500's because "they had never seen a boat that large before" and their little minds could not comprehend them. These are most likely the same people that still believe that all humans from 10,000 years ago were gibbering "cave men" without language, culture, or refined emotions.

[@arthas640]

I never get that kind of reasoning, tons of modern people tend to forget that ancient people were still PEOPLE, same basic humans like us since human evolution is really slow. I notice tons of these sort of stupid myths, like: 1. prehistoric humans (like neolithic and earlier) werent as emotional as us and would leave sick or injured family members to die or even kill them rather than take care of them. 2. that pre-modern humans saw color differently then us, like physically not being able to differentiate certain colors like blue from green, yellow from green, or seeing blue and purple as the same. 3. humans didnt really learn charity, altruism, or similar concepts until fairly recently, ignoring the fact that ancient churches and temples had public services for the poor or that some leaders are recorded as giving away free food to the poor even as early as ancient Egypt. So some of the oldest written records attest to charity/altruism and we have evidence of per-historic altruism with people taking care of the elderly and disabled. 4. I've also heard some people say that pre-historic humans including neanderthals and "cavemen" didnt get as cold as we do so they went around naked a lot even outside the tropics, which is insane since the world was colder then and even in places like the Sahara it can get really cold at night, even in the warmer parts of the year. In the Middle East they even used to have ice houses where they'd harvest frost at night and then keep it in the ice house for use later, so freezing temperatures arent that unusual even in hot regions so someone just lying around on the ground naked 3000 years ago would have gotten really cold if not gotten hypothermia. 5. and one of my personal favorites: that people X number of years ago didnt have any kind of morals or ethics. I hear this one a lot, especially with hardline atheists who claim religions were only invented to impose some sort of ethics on otherwise amoral sociopaths and the only way to keep them in line was to tell them a god would smite them and that threat was the only thing keeping pre-modern humans from just genociding each other into extinction.

[@PC_Simo]

@@arthas640 About that 5. one; that’s doing a huge disservice to atheism, if those hardline ”atheists” claim that. It’s directly conceding one of the arguments of the apologists; so, these ”atheists” are *_BEYOND REALLY_* stupid, if they unironically say that. 🤯

[@arthas640]

@@PC_Simo I spend a fair amount of time on Imgur, it's got tons of funny memes and interesting pictures but when it comes to politics and religion the site is a hive mind and an echo chamber. With religion the site is a bit like a cartoon parody of atheists you'd see on Fox: hateful, spiteful, ignorant, and extremely opinionated. I hear the "religious people invented god/gods to enforce some sense of morality because without the constant threat of violence they'd devolve into chaos and anarchy" and usually paint the modern age occurring thanks to secularization and atheism. There are tons who honestly believe that religion and religious people are incapable of philosophy, science, or rational thinking.

[@PC_Simo]

@@arthas640 I see. Thanks for the info. 👍🏻

[@ntavlas]

@@arthas640 well, about point 1- testosterone is a hormone that makes us less altruistic, less empathetic and more aggressive; in though times testosterone level rises in both sexes, in good times it declines, thus indeed making us more loving, more altruistic nowadays. Doesnt mean the people didnt love nor cared for their loved ones, but yes currently we evolved toward a greater empathy. And point 4 - certain ethnicities of people indeed have a higher tolerance to cold, but even average person can greatly increase their tolerance to cold through exposure; quite soon after starting regular winter swimming practice one becomes indeed far more tolerant of cold than thickly dressed peers (not recommended to tropical ethnicities though, they're indeed far more prone to frost bite). We do evolve to our climates, that is known, and yes the people from northern Europe for example (genome tell us they were present in the area for 15-10k years) can withstand cold longer and can function in 0-15 Celsius temperatures quite well without much additional "gear". There's that I think Dutch guy who took it to extreme? Anyway, an ice bath record belongs to Valerjan Romanovski, a lithuanian, who spend in -10 degrees Celsius water NAKED over 3hours with no harm to health, the temperature in his house in winter is between 5 to 10 degrees and winter swimming is crazily popular in Poland, Lithuania, Finland etc, gathering thousands on the sea shores each winter. So I would say that as a group, the prehistoric people of northern regions could indeed tolerate much colder temperatures. Not that we lost the adaptation, we just don't need to use it. But we still absolutely can tap back into it.

[@TheCrazyPlayer]

The delivery of "That's yellow, mate." while talking about white wine was perfect. I legitimately burst out laughing. Excellent video, Metatron.

[@olanordmann2743]

In Norway there is a divide between folk who call a certain type of cheese yellow and those who call it white. It is a pale yellow, I call it white so I felt personally attacked.

[@bacicinvatteneaca]

@@olanordmann2743 I keep having fights with everyone because I see teal as green rather than blue

[@wolf1066]

Likewise. I had to pause the video so I could laugh and not miss the next bit.

[@happytofu5]

@@bacicinvatteneaca teal definetly is more green than blue. I bought a dress from an online shop thinking it was royal blue (as displayed on my monitor) to find out that it was an ugly green (teal) instead!

[@neogeo1670]

@@bacicinvatteneaca teal is green, ive been arguing at my mother for years and she still continue to call it blue haha but its green with a hint of blue in it, thats what teal actually is but i see green!

[@rickpgriffin]

I always thought it was interesting that ancient greeks didn't call the sky blue possibly because it so often takes on many different colors--which polished bronze does, too. I can see the argument for it being entirely literary, but I wonder if another axis of perception plays a role too--I always liked the theory that comparing the sky to bronze and the sea to wine was in part because of their luster, rather than hue. I haven't done much of my own research since I first heard that theory but it did always stick in my mind and was the immediate counterargument to anyone who thought that "Homer was wrong!!" for unjustifiable reasons.

[@MandrakeDCR]

This reminds me of the story about natives who had never seen ships before, only saw strange disturbances in the water on the shore when the first explorers came, until they were so close they could clearly see people in the air and then the ship finally come into their perception as something entirely new. I am so intrigued to know how these stories get started :)

[@timsmith2525]

Anthropologists who want to get paid for magazine articles.

[@GuinessOriginal]

Anyone who lives near water knows the concept of a boat

[@MandrakeDCR]

@@GuinessOriginal Oh of course. It's just interesting how people who actually hold degrees will buy into these ridiculous concepts. I get it - we don't fully understand consciousness and perception, but come on man! lol

[@matmil5]

Fun Fact: Polish name for Blue is "Niebieski" and "Niebo" means the sky. So in Polish language it's less of a sky being blue and more of blue being generic sky colour

[@DreuxVince]

Like Metatron said in the video, in Italian we say "celeste" for "light blue" and "cielo" for "sky". "Celeste" is basically "sky-like"

[@kacperwoch4368]

There is also błękitny (light blue), siny (gray/pink blue, not a literal color) and granatowy (dark/navy blue).

[@memeboi6017]

thats interesting, seeing how its also a thing in Italian (I'm literally reading the other comment) you would expect that to be a common trend within European languages, as Italian is romance and polish is Slavic, it would make sense that it would be shared by the common ancestor of both languages (proto-Indo-European) but from what I've seen most languages descending from PIE don't have this connection, meaning that the blue = sky lingustic connection developed in both polish and romance languages independently, Neat!

[@SzklaneSkrzydla]

I believe Romance Hellenic and Slavic languages are more connected that Germanic-centred world is ready to accept 😅

[@catocall7323]

@@DreuxVince In Spanish, "celeste" is the same, and the more general term "azul" refers to pigments mad from Lapis Lazuli which are 'blue' and have been in use for thousands of years.

[@svensorensen7693]

I have always thought that the "Ancient people couldn't see blue" argument was an interesting phenomenon. It's like nobody ever stopped to think "Well maybe they just classified colors differently than we do." Edit: Which is exactly what you address in your video! Good stuff!

[@Le_Church]

Its the problem of new media. Anybody doing a scientific or historical segment in the past would have called a university or a government body and would have talk with someone with enough knowledge to dig into the things or point them towards someone with a cogent argument. Now they skim an article or read a headline, then just infer things and then people do the same with their work.

[@WisdomThumbs]

That’s actually the argument. There are islander cultures and a few in Africa who still classify blue as a shade of green. They can see the differences in greens better than most people. Words for “blue” typically arise late in cultural development. People can *see* blue, they just call it something else at first. EDIT: please don’t mistake this for a superiority argument, BTW, I’m getting sick of that. “Superior civilizations” lose the ability to feed and clothe themselves, everything is give-and-take with pros and cons. END EDIT Same thing happened with orange. It was just “red” until people wanted a more specific name. So they used the name of a fruit for what had once been “yellow-red.”

[@MehrumesDagon]

@@WisdomThumbs Also last time I checked, Japanese language had same word for both blue and green (Ao)

[@dr.benchcanister5277]

Most people who were educated in that subject understand that...In my years in art school i never met with someone who wouldn't understand that....This is just another pathetic example of how internet works...

[@bodyrumuae2914]

@@WisdomThumbs Was already familiar with what you pointed out in the first two paragraphs, but "Same thing happened with orange. It was just “red” until people wanted a more specific name. So they used the name of a fruit for what had once been “yellow-red.”" makes me wonder if there was a linguistic evolution distinguishing them with the words 'orange' and 'brown' or if it was more widely considered that orange and brown were different colors since earlier this year myself having learned that brown is considered a shade of orange.

[@AncientGreeceRevisited]

Thank you for reviewing our video, and especially captioning it as "still pretty good video." Our conclusions were very similar to yours, especially as you describe them at 21:17. It's more of a "cookie cutter" approach, where words encompass a different spectrum in every language. It's at the :"edges" of the spectrum - so to speak - that most confusions arise between them.

[@metatronyt]

Hi there! Happy to see you in the comments. Yes I liked your video and presentation style. Keep up the good work

[@geektrash180]

Happy to come across this one. In my language (Odia from India), many colors including blue are named related to nature. There are as many names and shades to blue as there are kinds of blue in nature. So is green, many reds. And people would many times describe colors as related to each other (yellowish green, reddish blue, bluish brown). Seeing color this unrestricted way helped me when I started to paint.

[@MrMirville]

Homer's description of the sea as wine-coloured was accurate : he meant the colour of the wine being pressed by feet in a large vat : it is clearly dark blue and the Black sea is often of that colour. Glass was not customary as a material to make cups and containers, it didn't shine red very often. Homer's description of the mediterranean sky as bronze-coloured was also accurate : it often has the colour of a light turquoise green oxydized bronze-covered dome.

[@philparisi9175]

How do you know that was what he was thinking about? Sounds suspicious as the first argument that they couldn’t see blue.

[@kagemushashien8394]

@@philparisi9175 He wrote it himself, comparing the sky and water to commen knowledge people had back then.

[@Kainis80]

@@philparisi9175 How would you describe the colors of a rainbow to someone who has spent their whole life in the desert? You start by looking around your immediate environment for anything similar. If that fails, you look at those things you believe the other to be familiar with.

[@craiggibbons8228]

Wine pressed by feet is not blue. If its dark grapes it's a blacky/purple colour If its light grapes its a white colour. So go bk to sleep

[@MotherFucker445]

Or he could of been describing the nights sky.

[@LenaFerrari]

First thing I tough after hearing the "wine-red sea" bit was: "oh, as it gets during sunset?". Nothing abnormal, I've seen it multiple times, even have some pictures of it in my phone from my last trip to the beach. People don't even think, do they?

[@ulrike9978]

Or, alternatively, both words in question don't mean "red" at all - "purple" (=porphyreos) dye from murex shells can range to basically black, depending on how it's processed and I remember a fascinating discussion in university, where one of my classmates pointed out that if you put red wine in a pottery cup (since glass drinking vessels didn't exist yet)? It's going to appear black. And it turns out that there are several other instances of describing the sea as dark... So maybe they weren't thinking so much of the surface and more of the depth of the sea? Just to add another perspective on the issue ...

[@shmehfleh3115]

Fun fact: The British named the color orange after the fruit. Like you said, 'orange' to them was just a shade between red and yellow prior to the orange being introduced to them in the Tudor age.

[@Nikelaos_Khristianos]

And some languages adapt the word for tomato to mean orange. 😄

[@redeye4516]

This is why redheads are called that, their hair was clearly orange but there wasn't a good name for it. Kinda wonder if there wasn't some byword for it at one time, like "Irish red" or "Gallic red" or some such after the hair coloration unique to celts.

[@DavidSmith-vr1nb]

​@@redeye4516 It was never entirely unique to the Celts, nor were the Celts entirely redheads. The genetic causes of red hair are extremely complex, and that's all I can say here without making a wall of text.

[@Nikelaos_Khristianos]

@@redeye4516 Names for hair colours are fundamentally a bit odd (at least in English in particular.) Especially because we’re essentially trying to simplify a broad spectrum by using the most vaguely accurate language to do so. For instance, think about the sheer number of different colours the phrase “dirty blonde” encompasses whereas there are some languages that would distinguish them between “blonde” and “brown”. And even some that would just call them, “blonde”.

[@azaria5419]

@@redeye4516 Most redheads I've met and seen on TV do have red, not orange, hair. I doubt the situation is different in the English Isles because most genes that cause red hair come from there.

[@impishrebel5969]

Thank you so much for this. They were doing this about Celtic peoples and I'm like uh. *Woad*. Hello. They had words for blue. They had distinct dyes for textiles. They used woad paste to make markings for literal thousands of years. The woad plant is green and ancient peoples had expansive knowledge how to bring different colors out of dyes, especially woad, that takes the ability to SEE it when applying various additives and mordants. Woad has a wide range of green and blue colors possible from it. I got into natural dyes and the amount of colors people with access to a few plants could produce is astounding. I thought I was going crazy from how all over this ridiculous theory is.

[@Spartan-035]

As an ancient historian and as someone who knows Ancient Greek, the reason for Homer and other authors using the word χλορος, χλορη, χλορον when describing honey is in face because it had a yellow-green color to it. The bees of the ancient world pollinated different flowers than the ones we primarily farm bees with today. Western farmers today typically have certain types of flowers for bees to create their honey from for the consistency in taste, but the ancient world didn’t, and so bees would pollinate from all sorts of flowers that can produce different hues of colors, and in Greece the main color produced was a yellow-green.

[@wolfsmaid6815]

even today if you let your bees run wild with whatever they want to get their honey from, you´ll have colour variations from greenish yellow all the way to dark red, so I don´t know where this belief comes from that all honey is necessarily golden.

[@cp1cupcake]

Even without knowing that, my assumption of the "wine coloured sea" was that it was described that way to note that it _wasn't_ blue at the time.

[@adambielen8996]

@@wolfsmaid6815 Probably from people who have only seen honey from supermarkets.

[@aker1993]

@@wolfsmaid6815 I have seen wild honey dark red due being in a jungle and most flowers bees pollinated are hardwoods and fruit trees.

[@mandowarrior123]

I've eaten green honey before. Its perfectly normal. Colour changes based on their diet and whatnot.

[@tiberiuscodius5828]

I remember my art history professor trying to convince us of this argument and then in the next class, showing us Minoan artwork with blue prominently featured

[@evanplanas]

hope your tuition wasn't much

[@Kainis80]

Might want to show them the Ishtar Gate, as well. The ancients, from India to the Irish isles traded in azurite as well as lapis. Hell, most of the wars in ancient Sumeria were in some way influenced by trying to control the lapis trade routes. These two blue minerals were used as base pigments as well as in jewelry and construction from before written language.

[@finfrog3237]

Good grief. Lol

[@virginias.poston4308]

As an art historian myself, this pains me deeply, and I'm sorry it happened to you.

[@tiberiuscodius5828]

@@virginias.poston4308 Haha, I appreciate it. Hopefully he realized his mistake and didn't continue to spread misinformation to other classes

[@admiralbees1690]

You are rapidly becoming one of my favourite KZbinrs Sir. A fantastic and ridiculously in depth analysis of a myth that's been bothering me since I first heard it.

[@wixworks]

Briiliant! Your analysis is overwhelming and the finale deafening.

[@ravensthatflywiththenightm7319]

20:04 What makes this particularly dismal is that this isn't the first time the BBC's done this. There was this other documentary where they made the most out of shape, zero muscle "volunteers" to run around in Bronze Age armor - rather than get someone who actually lifts - and then concluded that Bronze Age armor would have been "impossible" to wear in an actual battlefield. There are so many myths about our history generated by "editors" from the BBC that I can only call them the British Bullshit Channel.

[@nowayjosedaniel]

BBC is literally state funded propaganda. Imagine the low quality intellect who fully buys into the nationalism meme. Not that corporate media is any better, of course. Those clowns are literally actors - and the most dimwitted ones possible. They probably are the ones gleefully watching the BBC tell them about impossible armor, never questioning any of it.

[@darthknight1]

So sad. The BBC was once a high point of documentary television.

[@Xandros999]

So what was their takeaway? Bronze age armour was a hoax? Or only found in fanciful depictions of mythical heroes?

[@benjaminwatt2436]

Its not just the BBC pop science, fed to the masses, is almost always watered down and inaccurate if not flat out wrong

[@cp1cupcake]

Two things this reminded me of: BBC recently has been massively guilty of blackwashing history. I think Metatron did some videos which touched on this. Skalgrim did a video a while ago where he was sent a bronze kopesh to test. After his video came out, the guy who made it said its the best test of a bronze weapon he knows of, since Skal was the first who know anything about the use of a sword as more than an ancient artefact.

[@TRASH78246]

It's very interesting. In Greece, despite the fact that we now use the word "blue" (borrowed from the French language), we still have the words "κυανό" (cyano-the dark "navy blue"), "γαλανό" (the colour of the national Italian jersey, for example) and "Θαλασσί" ("sea blue" litteraly), as the colour of the stripes on the Argentine flag for example. And we use them to describe what we think of as different colours from each other, to this day! Also the word "πορφυρό" (porphyro) describes essentially the whole range of colors produced by mixing red and blue, from the dark red of wine to the intense purple of the imperial robes of the Eastern Roman Empire.

[@alphajames33]

Exactly! You saved me a lot of time from explaining the exact same thing. I mean, you just have to ask Greeks, who are taught Homer's Epics at school. If someone knows their language, it's the people who created it and use it still! The last part of @Metatron 's video is explaining this very well!

[@JackDesert]

I figured there wasn't a word for the range of blue but individual shades. Sort of like having a word for each type of feline animals but not one for the whole group. I know still not correct, but at least it's concerning categorization and not inability.

[@josepha3805]

BLOO!

[@TheNotoriousBlackShirtGuy]

This is one of my favorite video's of yours.

[@user-ps1ft1hy4j]

Really good! So much better and more sensible than the videos I've seen countermanding your argument(s)! Gained a subscriber!

[@thundercricket4634]

To be honest, I'd never even heard of this "Greeks couldn't see blue" myth before, but it reeks of the snide pretense you see in anthropological and archeological circles on occasion. It's called "The Church of Progressivism" and it basically boils down to this absurd notion that humanity does nothing but get better and smarter and wiser with each passing generation. That we never forget anything useful, and we never recycle or repackage bad ideas that were tried and debunked in the past.

[@nathanielcrosby2426]

That has had its historical basis in Whig History, which is basically what you described, but formulated in the 1700's.

[@sameash3153]

Just say you're right wing and go

[@Garry_Combine]

If we didn't repackage bad ideas Marxism would be dead

[@Garry_Combine]

@@nathanielcrosby2426 yup, but history isn't linear, it's chaotic just like man

[@MensHominis]

The earliest theories actually went down exactly that route, they combined the analysis of Homer's language and epics from other languages with the notion of evolution occuring very fast (even Darwin had thought this) and the newly-found phenomenon of colour blindness. They basically said that the latter was a relic from earlier "stages" of evolution in some people, and the fact that contemporary indigenous people had less sophisticated vocabularies for colours only fit into their narrative.

[@od1401]

One of the biggest debunking smackdowns I've seen in a long time. An absolute slam dunk. Very entertaining.

[@metatronyt]

Thanks!

[@Asdfgfdmn]

Good morning What’s the soundtrack at the end?

[@GuinessOriginal]

It was like listening to a flat earther 😂 I love Metatron but I’m afraid he’s wrong on this one

[@rozzgrey801]

@@GuinessOriginal You want someone to ask you why you think Metatron is wrong so you can bang on about your theory? I have a feeling if we heard it we would be disappointed.

[@GuinessOriginal]

@@metatronyt Metatron, I love your stuff, been subbed for years. However, if you’ll permit me, meaning absolutely no disrespect, I’d like to present an alternative view. Are you familiar with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? It suggests that the structure and vocabulary of a language can shape the way it’s speakers perceive and think about the world. If the ancient Greeks and Romans lacked a specific word for "blue," it is plausible that their perception and interpretation of this colour might have been different from ours. Scientific research in the field of colour perception has shed light on the variability of colour perception across cultures and languages. For instance, studies conducted by anthropologist Brent Berlin and linguist Paul Kay have shown that the number of basic colour terms varies between languages. Some languages, including certain indigenous ones, have fewer distinct colour terms than English. This suggests that the categorization and interpretation of colours can differ significantly across cultures. The presence of blue objects in ancient Egyptian culture does not necessarily imply that they perceived or understood the colour in the same way we do today. The Egyptians might have identified certain materials or pigments that appeared visually distinct from others, without having the same nuanced understanding or perception of "blue" that we possess. Imagine a scenario where a person from a society that lacks a specific word for "romantic love" encounters a couple in a loving relationship. Despite not having a word to define and conceptualize romantic love, they may still observe the couple's behavior and recognize the emotional bond between them. However, their understanding and interpretation of that bond might differ from someone who possesses the specific concept of romantic love. Similarly, the absence of a specific word for "blue" in the ancient Greek and Roman languages doesn't necessarily mean they perceived and experienced the colour in the same way we do. I would argue that it is entirely plausible that the ancient Greeks and Romans had a distinct interpretation of blue that was different from ours, hence why they didn’t have a distinct word and definition for the concept. The sky is the single biggest expanse of colour humans ever see, and not to have a definition or concept of “sky-blue” is telling.

[@zachhoy]

lots of great points crammed in! Good work

[@deathless_actual4936]

I really enjoyed the way this video finished off. Very well done!

[@pattifeit4354]

Thank you! The misrepresentation of Homer's "wine-dark sea" has made me crazy for years. It's just plain wrong. The translator did not say "wine-colored," he said "wine-dark." I'm not even an artist (or an English major) and I get that. I would give this video a thousand likes if I could!

[@vandeheyeric]

Well even if he did, one novel concept is the fact that maybe he was writing that because the Sea REALLY WAS dark and wine-colored in the given scene. As Metatron pointed out, this is hardly impossible, and the fact that so few people seem to have considered this when writing up their balleyhoed disserations is annoying.

[@GuinessOriginal]

Why didn’t they ever call the sky blue? Why didn’t they have a word for the colour? It’s the single biggest expanse of colour our eyes ever see, you’d think they’d have a word for it.

[@katiequeen7225]

@@GuinessOriginal Green is also one of the most common colours we come across yet there was no separate word for it in Japanese until the 1900s, they used the same word for blue and green. Sometimes there is no need for a separate word because everyone already knows what you mean

[@SteveSimi]

For me you are more credible from most science KZbin channels, Metatron. The reason is that you admit and apologize for all of the mistakes in your videos. It's clear that you are a true scholar and not fixated on views and fame. You seek the Truth like a true scientist, keep it up!

[@metatronyt]

Thank you Steve

[@AleskyMaxomovishPeshkov]

@@metatronyt Was there square jawlines in ancient times? Because all the vases and sculptures I have seen so far show round-faced men and women unless you can give me an example to the contrary?

[@alonsoACR]

@@AleskyMaxomovishPeshkov look up some roman busts The Romans sculpted all features, blemishes and all, so use that. Basically: Yes, and it seems it was even more common than today

[@AleskyMaxomovishPeshkov]

@@alonsoACR I haven't seen any ancient busts of men, or women for that matter, with square, angular features

[@macalmy6750]

Awesome video. This myth has bugged me for years. You did an excellent job of dismantling it piece by piece.

[@octosquatch.]

Awesome video. I was always skeptical about the whole "they couldn't see blue" thing. How could someone not notice one of the three colors our eyes actually see while simultaneously recognizing a color that our brains interpret into existence.

[@ronald3836]

Not to mention that blue is a rather common eye colour...

[@dritsy]

because most people have 3 receptors for blue green and red when one of them is damages or mutated they become color blind , my coaches son was color blind and didnt know until he wanted to be a pilot and green and red you must be able to see, yet he saw them the opposite way around , i asked surly hes been in a car before and seen traffic lights, turns out no one had ever brought it up not even him and he figured red was go and green is stop, blew my mind tbh but the sky is not blue thats refraction of lights its actually transparent ... another fun fact in hieroglyphics they have no letter L or most consonants tbh so how could they even say the word blue?

[@ronald3836]

@@dritsy if someone sees green and red colors swapped, then he will still call red red and green green and there is no way we can find out that he sees them differently than we do. In fact, we don't know if red to you looks the same as red to me.

[@dritsy]

@ronald3836 not true, he was trying to land planes (on a simulation) while they were red not green, so he does see them the opposite way round but thanks for your theory

[@ronald3836]

@@dritsy he was just fooling you. If he always sees red as we see green and vice versa, it is impossible to know this.

[@LeonidasSparta-Fun-History]

Thanks for this Metatron... i never understood this. Infact, blue appears to be a common colour throughout greece. There are many paintings that have blue pigments, even the Parthenon is possible to have had blue paint. There is an amazing exibit that recolours ancient sculpture, and blue is very common!

[@LeonidasSparta-Fun-History]

@@Alexandros.Mograine youd be surprised the amount of people believe it. I myself am a hoplite reenactor and heard people say this

[@BlackFeather713]

@@Alexandros.Mograine did you miss the beginning of the video? It wasn't a single dude on tiktok

[@Alexandros.Mograine]

@@BlackFeather713 aight then i just mixed it up with something else, because for some reason i remember some known ancient culture didnt have a word for blue, quess this video brought that to my mind. also "1 guy on tiktok" isnt really literal, originally comes from the fact that sometimes dumb ppl find each other on some dumb tiktok page, like those pages that metatron has covered :P its more or a insult than anything else.

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

I have heard this, and similar myths, coming from people when they mention color theory. One I found particularly bothersome was a video where a guy said Westerners couldn't understand manga because it is black and white and that is a sign of how incompatible our cultures are. He made a whole baseless claim about manga having no color because of their culture. The truth is they made it black and white because color printing wasn't affordable after Japan surrendered to America. But you have this guy saying it was because of some alleged color theory thing. And he did mention the Greek blue thing to back his claim.

[@Nick-hi9gx]

@@SergioLeonardoCornejo "The truth is they made it black and white because color printing wasn't affordable after Japan surrendered to America." And because, because of this, there was a whole generation of linework artists that moved from essentially advertising into making manga, but there weren't equivalent colorists for at least 2 generations after the war; by the point colorists were a big thing, black and white for manga was the norm, so they just started adding in colored covers, 2page spreads sometimes, posters made from a single page that got colored, things like this.

[@catfishrob1]

Calling the sea "red" can simply mean "comparatively red", especially in a poetic sense. Like, the sea was still blue, and that was assumed, but it had a slightly reddish hue to it that particular day, due to the light, dust in the sky, some particulate matter in the water, any number of things.

[@ivarwind]

But the sea isn't blue - if the sky is blue, the sea can reflect that, and it appears blue. If it's overcast, the sea appears grey. If the sky is red (like sunset) that's what the sea will reflect. At night the sky is black, and so is the sea. Shine a light on it, and it will still appear black, except for some white foam, perhaps.

[@feuerling]

​@@ivarwind but the water itself is still blue. It's just usually overpowered by algae, dust, and all other kinds of dissolved and microscopic floating matter

[@yeasstt]

@@ivarwind water is blue. If water simply reflected the color of the sky, it would be the same shade of blue as the sky.

[@4473021]

@@feuerling the water is colorless

[@fallenmango8420]

​@@yeasstt thats not how reflections work. Pour yourself a glass of water and check to see if its blue.

[@bhorrthunderhoof4925]

So love the way how you explain things. Thangs for this debunk!

[@angelamariasiciliano4604]

GRAZIE! Sotto ad uno dei video che hai chiamato in causa avevo commentato tempo fa che il blu lo mettevano ovunque, e ora ci sei tu che riassumi tutto molto meglio

[@JackPhoenixCz]

Fun fact: (literally) green (and blue) honey actually happened. A company threw away waste from candy production, which included food colorants. Being sugary, it was a great food source for local bees, unfortunately, the colorants made it to the resulting honey.

[@alonsoACR]

That happens naturally as well! It depends entirely on their food, and their favorite flowers. Some honey can even come out red!

[@ginnyjollykidd]

I've seen deep red and almost black honeys at the Kentucky State Fair. Some of these prize-winning beekeepers have amazing natural resources for bees to gather from! I think the really dark red one was honey made from raspberry flowers.

[@830toAwesome]

It was M&Ms actually. Sadly they wouldn't let anyone taste it. It wasn't worth the risk of it being toxic.

[@lethauntic]

Unfortunate or fortunate? I'd take some green honey

[@JackPhoenixCz]

@@lethauntic Frp, what I've read, it apparently tasted pretty bad.

[@alvinhelms2170]

Given your experience in Japan, I'm surprised you didn't mention how the Japanese distinguish between blue and green differently than we do in the West - as a result, frequently calling things "blue" that we would generally call "green", simply because they put the linguistic borderline at a different point on the spectrum. (For example, their traffic lights use the same basic colors as ours, but they call that "GO" color "blue".)

[@davidthegoldsmith4195]

When, in English the green light is also a GO! Hahahaha

[@nobafan7515]

They also do the same thing for the meaning of green being rookie.

[@skanvak]

Because they don't, that's more the white wine thing. But for what I seen they distinguish blue and green as us in there language never really spot a difference in my twenty + visit there.

[@specter86fl]

this is the true explanation, its not that ancients couldnt see blue, its that they related it to other colors they had already clearly defined

[@nooneyouknow13]

Japan also has plenty of go lights we'd in fact also call blue.

[@SrGundisalvus]

Beautiful outstanding outro!!! Please keep up the awesome videos Metatron~! Love your content

[@buggaoff8160]

This is an amazing video Metatron, thank you.

[@Nexus_Hives]

"The ancient Greeks and all ancient people couldn't see blue." What? Did they never look at the sky? "They might have been colour blind." Then would we not have a bunch of different ancient people describing the sky as a different colours?

[@ulrichkalber9039]

how would they do that if they were color blind, they would have refered to the brightness, the clouds, but never the color. this does not mean the theory is correct tho.

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

I swear some claims on color theory are absolutely absurd.

[@Eldiran1]

That not what it could have been. Some tribe/civilization describe the green and the blue as the same color. For exemple , the japanese didn't have a word for orange and pink before knowing european .In japanese , ou said "Orenji" for orange , "Pinku" for pink , but this doesn't indicate that they can't see that their pork aren't pink , just that for them , pink was some sort of brown or red , not a color on is own. it could be the same for the ancient Greeks like for these tribe i mention earlier. The inuit have a lot more word for snow or white that we ever have in english but that doesn't mean we can't see these type of snow or white. Juste that for US we have one word for all of these white and if they are darker , it become gray . i think you see my point now .

[@lfcmike12]

@@ulrichkalber9039 Colour blind people see certain colours as a different colour, for instance red may look brown, or purple might look blue etc etc.

[@pennsyltuckyreb9800]

Or, you know, the FLIPPING OCEAN? Being a major seafaring people with amazingly crafted ships for trade and war...

[@wavetactics13]

Thank you for addressing that structural coloration and blue pigment result in the same effect. When the claim was made that there was not much blue in the natural world, as a biologist I had to stop the video at how ridiculous that claim was.

[@metatronyt]

I absolutely understand the feeling

[@arthas640]

The bit about blue being uncommon in nature at least makes a bit of sense in the limited context of ancient people since the average Joe in the ancient world rarely left his county or state so they wouldnt have a ton of knowledge of plants outside their region. It falls apart as far as a pigmentation being rare though since dyes were popular trade items and the Hellenic people had a thriving dye/pigment trade including Lapis Lazuli which was traded from the eastern Mediterranean to Greece and Italy or down to Egypt. Hell, Carthage's empire was originally built on the dye trade especially Phoenician Tyrian purple dye which was such a common trade item that the word "Phoenicia" is thought to be derived from the Greek words for "land of purple" or "purple land".

[@melinaouzouni6151]

Oh the closure of the video with the pictures of the colorful sky!!! Just amazing💖

[@gerardovenegas4610]

I have had so many arguments about this!! Especially the study with the tribe!! thanks man! Good job!

[@blow-by-blow-trumpet]

It's so refreshing to see really well researched content like this. I wish everyone took the same trouble. You must put a lot of work into your content.

[@metatronyt]

2 weeks :)

[@nowayjosedaniel]

@@metatronyt The hero we need but dont deserve.

[@cxx23]

I love the way you debunk it within 5 minutes, and then you jump to another way to debunk it from another avenue, and you do that time and time again throughout the video. What masterpieces these history videos are.

[@GuinessOriginal]

He doesn’t really debunk it though. He debunks a load of straw men. I love metatron but this had a strong whiff of flat earth about it 😂

[@cxx23]

@@GuinessOriginal That is not true at all. There is literally zero evidence that people couldn't see blue. He didn't even need to argue all the points that he did. There are so many ways to debunk that ridiculous theory. Like why were stones like Lapis Lazuli, Turquoise, Apatite, and more not only super popular and valuable, but were even used as dyes for clothes. In fact blues were even used against colors that contrast blue, which would only be possible if they saw blue as we do today. Lastly, your dislike for a KZbinr should not affect your ability to think rationally. When Metatron is wrong, I point it out. Facts are facts regardless of the mouth they fly from.

[@Dowlphin]

But he blundered several times himself, calling pink light red and purple dark red.

[@cxx23]

@@Dowlphin Pink is literally light red. Like before there was a name for pink it was called light red because that's exactly what it is. Purple isn't dark red though. Also, why does any of that matter? It has no affect on the outcome of the video. There is zero evidence that ancient greeks didn't see blue. The very idea is insane, and goes directly against how evolution works.

[@Dowlphin]

@@cxx23 Curb your inflationary use of "literally". It doesn't help your point. Pink is not light red, because if you maximize its vibrancy, you end up with red, not with vibrant pink. The flower "pink" he referred to he also cherrypicked one image, whereas Wikipedia shows various types of it with very different hues. We, in the modern anglophone world at least, with science-based norms, define colors based on the color wheel. Hue, saturation, lightness. This is why we can say that brown is dark orange. Play around with the color wheel of an image editor software a bit, like Krita or GIMP.

[@Luziagz]

I just discovered you a few days ago and I am enjoying your videos! This one is brilliant!

[@LordoftheRems]

Great video!! Well put

[@Vjeimy]

The ultimate irony is that the English word "Ocean" is Greek and is etymologically related to the Greek word for blue, κυανο 😂

[@shade221]

"ocean" comes from Ὠκεανός for "Oceanus", the diety, not κυανο for "blue/cyan"

[@johnhighway7399]

@@shade221 He didn't say it comes from κυανο, he said these two words are related, and they are.

[@shade221]

@@johnhighway7399 source for them being etymologically related?

[@thesisypheanjournal1271]

When I was working as an English teacher in a Korean preschool, the Korean co-teachers were surprised that I put a bright yellow sun in the classroom. They told me that the sun is red, because it’s hot. I pointed out to them that it actually is yellow, even though it is hot. We just kind of sat there for a while with our minds blown and went back to decorating our classrooms.

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Turns out the sun is mostly white, the yellow/orange/red appears just in contrast to the blueish sky.

[@thesisypheanjournal1271]

@@HappyBeezerStudios Cool.

[@jaycee330]

The sun is actually white. And the Japanese see the sun as red as well (hence the red circle on their flag).

[@zimriel]

@@jaycee330 In fairness, I thought the Japanese cast the RISING sun on their flag, which sun looks red. The sun at midday is less-important to Japanese culture of the Meiji era and, er, the later decades.

[@dannymartinez3600]

@@HappyBeezerStudios yeah it makes imaging the sun not look exciting without post processing some color.

[@mariosmoschis5526]

amazing video as always!

[@dimitrioskatelouzos2947]

A great video! Playful and factual! I enjoyed it! Thank you!

[@benjaminwatt2436]

I have a hypothesis that pop science has led us to believe out ancestors were relatively dumb. I think this can be attributed to the idea of hunter gatherers and cave men and humanity moving toward civilization. However I think this myth of the ancients not being able to see the color blue, is a continuation and misunderstanding of these concepts and the dehumanization of the human race as we go backward in time.

[@5naxalotl]

a more modern example: there are young people now who are totally indignant at the idea that people in the sixties could have gone to the moon. i think their essential problem is that those idiots didn't even have cell phones! it's a very dunning kruger thing. none of these people know enough about technology to describe the physics of a steam train that engineers knew in the 19th century

[@Losantiville]

Had may Historian’s laughing at miasma theory of illness. Saw them walking outside by themselves with masks on.

[@juanausensi499]

@@Losantiville Compared to the four humours theory, the miasma theory was an HUGE improvement

[@doomyboi]

@@juanausensi499 I've been reading books on medieval medicine, and like, honestly, even the four humours wasn't the worst thing they could have subscribed to and clearly it worked to some degree, people did survive worse wounds and live longer under these theories than before. The use of astrology in diagnoses and treatment plans was odd though and I'm pretty sure they didn't really serve any purpose but to provide physicians an excuse to not take on cases they knew they couldn't save.

[@pamelapamper]

Ancient ppl being dumb is the lie they keep telling us to help sell us the idea of 'progress'.

[@j.r.warren5794]

Disturbing to think that people can draw some of the conclusions they do based on little evidence, but that's the world we live in now.

[@coreys2686]

We've been making decisions on little to no evidence for millennia.

[@jokerman9623]

Tbh that's always been the world. it's just been filtered through the decades

[@kostasbiker9302]

There's literally a video on KZbin that says "Trojan war:When ancient Albanians fought each other" so I think stupidity is prevalent.

[@malafakka8530]

I think the world has always been like that, but now we can share it via the internet 😉

[@j.r.warren5794]

@@malafakka8530 You think huh? Being considerably older than you I can tell it hasn't always been this way. We once understood how blessed we were to live in the US.

[@ericrawlins8444]

Thank you SO MUCH for making this video, I knew the claims (always including references to Home's "wine-red skies") couldn't possibly be substantiated, and now I have proof! Great job, wish I could give the video more than one thumbs-up!

[@mry82]

Firstly, I really enjoyed the montage at the end! Secondly, this was an excellent comprehensive assessment if the idea of blue "not existing;" however, I did watch the AsapSCIENCE video a while back, and my memory of the takeaway from that video was actually similar to yours, though you point out that linguistically they were expressing the idea of blue. I was left with the impression that they could see blue, but had no category/word that directly corresponds to our idea of it (making some of the same points you did about pink, etc...). I do think the thumbnail and title could have some clickbait value, but that the video itself was pretty good and not really in disagreement, just less complete, than yours. Thank you for sharing!

[@gamera5160]

There are English words for different shades of blue. We have "sky blue", "robin's egg blue", teal, cyan, etc. There are a lot more if you go into a paint section of a hardware store... but generally, we just call stuff "blue" and occasionally describe stuff as "light" or "dark".

[@metatronyt]

What I find interesting is that you consider teal connected to blue, while in Italian we connect it to green, since we call it verde acqua, water green.

[@maiaallman4635]

If you think a hardware shop has a lot of blues, try going into a sewing material shop.

[@VeretenoVids]

@@metatronyt Actually, Americans will fight over this and, if they are congenial, they will finally agree that there are shades of teal that lean green and shades that lean blue. It's the same with turquoise, especially if you are talking about the stone. If you want to pick a fight, ask people whether periwinkle is blue or purple. 😄

[@VeretenoVids]

@@maiaallman4635 Gets even crazier in the paint section of an art supply store...

[@gljames24]

@@metatronyt Teal is just a shade of cyan so it's equal parts green and blue if it's 500nm.

[@no_handle_required]

Good grief. The things "experts" come up with, it's a miracle people can survive at all.

[@legiran9564]

"expert" is dog whistle for "don't question, just accept"

[@no_handle_required]

@@legiran9564 Well said. For me it's also a clear indicator that that I should look it up myself, preferably from somewhere near the actual source as possible.

[@huguesdepayens807]

@@legiran9564 Exactly, they have the power to redefine words to make whatever they come up with right.

[@christopherdaffron8115]

Well as Metatron pointed out, it wasn't the experts that came up with this notion, it was the non-experts misinterpreting and distorting what the experts said.

[@ssholum]

@@christopherdaffron8115 Which, hilariously, is the exact kind of person that gets trotted out to be an "expert" that we should listen to. Same as how "The Science" always seems to refer to dictates from bureaucrats or policy decisions from interest groups, not the actual research used to inform either of those groups.

[@ProteoEuthismos]

What a masterclass. Bien hecho. Saludos hermano.

[@Speireata4]

Thank you for this video. I always thought there was something fishy about this idea, but I didn't have the time or energy to find sources to debunk it. Thank you for doing this.

[@Soapy-chan_old]

One of the arguments to why they wouldnt have a word for blue was that in the animal and plant kingdoms there are rarely blue colors. BUT THEY HAD AN OCEAN AND THE SKY TO SEE THAT IS LITERALLY BLUE OF COURSE THEY WOULD KNOW THAT COLOR

[@Zekander]

yeah, especially in Greece, where the sky and the sea are the bluest of blue. While at the North Sea you could say: well nothing here is blue, not even the sky or the sea!

[@Soapy-chan_old]

@@Zekander hehe xD

[@adorabell4253]

@@Zekander I was born in Leningrad and the closest that sky and water ever got to blue was grey.

[@hariszark7396]

Actually there IS a word for blue in ancient Greek. It's called kiano (Κυανό - cyan ).

[@unarealtaragionevole]

The thing about this topic is that no one really thinks they couldn't "see" blue. That's click bait for both sides of this topic. The actual debate in the academic world is why do the Greeks not really like to use the word blue. And this is true. When we look at Ancient and Classical Greek works, we can see them write the other colors often, but there is a strange lack of "blue." They reference blue things, we know they can see it, and they even have words for it...but they don't say the word blue very often and that's the question mark. Why? Many people inaccurately equate the words καινός and Γλαῦκος as "blue" in Ancient and Classical works....and this is more complicated than we want to admit usually. Cause in modern Greek these words have evolved into connotations of blue....but they didn't really have this definite meaning back in the day. In fact they described shades of color...for example καινός from which we get cyan actually was used to describe dark purple, dark green, darker black, and dark gray. But people say, "No they had a word for blue. It's καινός." Is purple blue? Is green blue? Is black blue? Same for the word Γλαῦκος, which actually was used for light colors like light yellow, light green, light purple, and light gray. But people say, "No, Γλαῦκος means blue." Well yes...it could, but it could also not. It depends. Ah the nuance of languages. LOL

[@MrCovi2955]

It blows my mind that so many people who should know better basically take the fact that some ancient languages didn't have a single word that only meant what our word Blue means as proof that they couldn't see it. Modern example: dark blue and light blue are different colors in Russian (I believe that's the language that I thought of). They actually used to be different colors in English as well (the nebulous "indigo" used to refer to dark blue, and "blue" referred to light blue or cyan). To say that we refer to both colors as "blue" means that we can't see a difference between light blue and dark blue is ludicrous. But I guess it doesn't make as good of clickbait to say "did you know they didn't have a specific word for what we have a specific word for?" Similarly, in English (and most latin based languages that I'm aware of) we have a single word "Love" that covers a lot of emotions. In several ancient languages including Hebrew and Greek, there are 4 words translated as "Love": 1-Agape is selfless love, the "I'd give my life for" love. Many people have this love for family, or country, etc. It is a virtue. 2-Philia is a friendship. This is that one friend you met when you were 6 and 30 years later you still track each other down to talk. 3-Eros is sexual love. This is what people feel for their significant other, it is heavily based on the laws of attraction. 4- Storge is "familiar" or "team" love. This is the love that a football team or military squad has for each other. They may have nothing in common other than that one group, but they'd fight for each other. Just because we don't have 4 separate words, and decide to merge them all into one, Love, doesn't mean countries with a latin rooted language cannot feel those emotions. But that's basically what they're arguing.

[@alonsoACR]

Spanish, Portuguese and (I believe) Italian have two words for love. English technically does as well. I like you vs. I love you. What would you use to a friend, like one on the same soccer team? Edit: At least* two I thought of a few for my language (Spanish) Te quiero (literally, "I want you): For family and close friends. And your girlfriend/boyfriend. Te amo: Uhh... just don't use it. It's for really, REALLY deep, sentimental love. I only see myself saying it to a fiancée or spouse... sometimes. Te quiero for day--to--day stuff is plenty. Me gustas: It's like English "I like you" Me caes bien: Slang-ish, informal. Some regions got their own variant (¡molas!). It's for someone you get along with well and you personally like as a person. Nothing deep about it. We have an equivalent for eros but for the love of God just don't. Eros in ancient Greek was especifically for sexual desire, by the way. I hesitate to even tell that to a wife you hold dear that she basically just excites your loins. Agapó only, please. Or Aristotle would be ashamed.

[@Selrisitai]

@@alonsoACR "Te amo: Uhh... just don't use it. It's for really, REALLY deep, sentimental love. I only see myself saying it to a fiancée or spouse... sometimes. Te quiero for day--to--day stuff is plenty." So this would be the equivalent of giving a small speech about how much you adore your wife, all in two words? XD

[@alonsoACR]

@@Selrisitai Yes, exactly. It's not that we're cold, it's just a really strong word. However it's also a COMMON word. Amor in Spanish is intense affection, attraction, or desire. It's wholesome, gives us energy & purpose to live, completes us. I'm literally paraphrasing from the dictionary. If you wanna make a point you could indeed say "amo a mis hijos! (I _love_ my kids!) Or use that to say you really "amas" fried chicken. But you aint saying just "querer", fried chicken gives your life meaning and completeness. Sure you could, I've heard it before. Just a bit exaggerated LMAO. Or, well, straight up say te amo to another person. But as I said... idk it's a big word. Saying that without really meaning it is cruel, and if you mean it, well, go get married already!

[@OtherDAS]

Excellent point about categorization.

[@limitisillusion7]

Your descriptions are the words themselves. Just because there isn't a single word for those different types of love doesn't mean there isn't a way to communicate the same idea in English.

[@Miamcoline]

Incredibly interesting and detailed. Thank you.

[@andrewjones1143]

Thank you! This is great! I've been so frustrated with the blue myth for a long time. I'm glad someone else gets it!

[@iamme6773]

I just asked my son what he would think I meant if I said the sea was wine dark. He said, "The sun is rising or setting." He's colorblind, and even he can figure that sentence out! Lol.

[@giorgoswsker9482]

Thank you Sir for clarifying this with logic and facts. When i discussed the "theory" of the BBC with my Greek compatriots, they all bursted at laughs or expressed clear disbelief. Not all Greeks have read and understood Homer, however they just continue to speak with more or less the same words, their ancestors have for these colours. So for Greeks, it's self evident that this is a false interpretation of the study. The problem is that the rest of the world gets misinformed, maybe for no reason (?). That's a topic for another video. Please, keep up these videos, they make a difference.

[@metatronyt]

Not to mention that Homeric Greek doesn’t represent all of Ancient Greece. It’s just one of many varieties of the Greek language

[@sonaruo]

@@metatronyt well it is even more complex, every city had its own version of greek, apart they had a different alphabet set, they also substitute letters in words, the famous " η ταν η επι τασ" would be called in athenian " η την η επι τησ" and not going in local words to describe something so taking 1 writer from one city to say all greeks is beyond deceptive

[@celesteyar27]

@ANIKHTOS So...there were different ancient Greek dialects.

[@sonaruo]

@@celesteyar27 what you consider latin alphabet was a greek alhabet there where some greek cities that had in, and one very close to rome,

[@Thorenhard]

@@celesteyar27 exactly, hence a bit stupid to assume what one greek wrote holds true for all of greece

[@NoThankYouToo]

This is excellent work. Thank you.

[@The-Mstr-Pook]

This was the most enjoyable of all your videos I have watched. Well done. 😊 Also I am pleased your monetization situation has been resolved. 😎

[@teacherdude]

Always thought this was weird as Greece is as a blue a nation as you can find, it is literally everywhere in the summer skies and seas.

[@mandowarrior123]

And the colour bronze turns in a length of time...

[@alanmichelsandoval8768]

This is a new level of response video, instead of just debunking it, Metatron went the extra mile, it's so detailed.

[@simonspacek3670]

Debunk, destroy, burn down, plow and salt the ground.

[@mathewsydney8929]

The ending! Oh man! Chef's kiss! Beautiful and informative

[@cap.barbosa7619]

I've been a subscriber since 2017 and the videos just keeping getting better. Keep the good work 👏

[@metatronyt]

Thanks!

[@andrewstripay5987]

my first question to people who make this claim is why would anyone take so many risks and go to such an expense to procure lapis lazuli? thank you for such a comprehensive debunk!

[@arthas640]

Because people would pay top dollar for dye in a color that doesnt exist. Imagine if you invented a new color no one had seen before, rich people would pay their weight in gold to brag about some art piece painted in it. The first dude to find Lapis Lazuli was like an ancient Elon Musk.

[@lizcademy4809]

I'm glad you mentioned orange ... a very interesting color. In English literature, hair was sometimes referred to as "tawny". This was the name used for hair the color we now call "red", which isn't red, but ... orange. Shades of dark orange have a special name in English ... brown. I won't explain, Technology connections has an excellent video on this.

[@alonsoACR]

The word "redhead" and the name for the "red fox" predate the importation of the word orange as well

[@arachnophilia427]

"orange" is a funny word anyways. the color is named for the fruit, and fruit is a rebracket of "a naranj" into "an orange". apparently english speakers didn't think the color needed a special designation until people brought citrus back.

[@xenn4985]

@@arachnophilia427 fruit so good it made us see a new color

[@ravinraven6913]

orange is orange because of the red...in it....orange isn't a real color but a color derived from the blending of red and yellow, AKA 2/3 primary colors. And I say isn't a real color loosely. Without the red, the hair would be blonde. without the blonde the hair would be black.

[@Byssbod]

Orange is just brown with a different level of saturation and brightness anyway

[@josephwaters2792]

Really well done! Thanks!

[@rachelmendez5789]

This video has been needed for a while. I've been tired of this urban myth for a loooong time. Thank you. 🙏💪

[@NoahSpurrier]

Man, I remember doing some electrical engineering work for a company and they wanted a display to show red green and yellow. That required three LEDs. Then it came up that they also wanted show blue. But that would mean an extra LED which would raise the Bill Of Materials cost. I suggested they just use red, green, and blue LEDs and mix the colors to get any color they desired. “But what about yellow?” That would just be red and green mixed. They couldn’t comprehend this and thought I was nuts. I tried to explain that’s how computer displays work. They didn’t believe me. There is no yellow in display. It’s just red and green mixed.

[@NoahSpurrier]

@ani a there is CMYK for subtractive colors used in printers and such. I’m not as familiar with how that works.

[@gianniskoulis8840]

Ancient Greeks had at least 2 words to describe color blue, "γλαυκον" (glafkon) describing open blue, Athena the goddess was mentioned as such, and "κυανον" (kianon) to describe deep blue. And yes, if the latter sounds familiar, cyanide, it's because the same poison is blue in it's nature

[@wayfaringspacepoet]

it's also the word that gave us the colour name cyan, for printing work (the C in CMYK), and the more expansive sets of primary paint pigments; this word was also adopted by several Slavic languages as the standard colour for blue, though it only denoted the darker shade while there was a separate word for the cerulean hue; another link to cyan in scientific terminology includes the chemical called phthalocyanine which can produce both green and blue hues depending on its reaction - giving us Bob Ross's "phthalo" blue as well as anthocyanin - the pigment found in plants that, based on their pH, makes them appear red, purple, blue, or black, and the only food-safe natural blue food colorant at the present time is Phycocyanin, also known as Spirulina

[@ElBribri]

outstanding video, directly to favorites!!

[@bryanfarnet2037]

Outstanding video 👍

[@Ukitsu2]

Never heard about this "topic" before but I was reading a bit of Hesiod's Theogony a few days ago and IT LITERALLY SAYS "... SHE OF THE BLUE EYES..." when referring to a goddess. edit: in the original in Greek they use the word "Γλαῦκος" (Glaukos) which sounded familiar to me as a minor god or hero, so I search for in Pierre Grimal's Dictionary of Classical Mythology and do I found? Glaukos was a SEA god. This "theory" is so dumb we don't even need the Metatron to debunk it. Now, to the video itself.

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

It is dumb, but you got no idea of how annoyingly prevalent it is.

[@Nick-hi9gx]

Interestinly, "she of the sea eyes" and "she of the sea-blue eyes" and both also show up; they very, VERY clearly equated her with having light blue eyes, like the seas around much of Greece.

[@Ukitsu2]

@@SergioLeonardoCornejo Yeah, funny I never came in contact with it. Let's not throw away our paper books yet, they can save us from a lot of ignorance.

[@SergioLeonardoCornejo]

@@Ukitsu2 yup. Even physical documents are relatively easy to erase. Digital information even more. That's why censorship is so pernicious.

[@ErebosGR]

The ancient Greeks had actually TWO words for blues: _γλαυκός_ for silvery blue (and later describing light greenish blue), and _κυάνεος/κυανοῦς_ for the deep blue of the sky. That's why our flag is called _κυανόλευκη_ (= blue-white). The goddess Athena was nicknamed _γλαυκῶπις_ ( _γλαύξ_ + _ὤψ_ = silvery blue + eye/face) in Homer's works, but could also be interpreted as owl-eyed meaning acutely perceptive (like an owl), because γλαύξ also means owl. That's why owls were associated with Athena and later used as symbols of wisdom. Homer also describes the sea as _γλαυκή_ . Herodotus used _γλαυκόν_ to describe the eye color of Scythians. Plato describes how to mix _κυανόν_ (deep blue) and _λευκόν_ (white) to get γλαυκόν (silver blue). Those KZbinrs are dumb and/or lazy.

[@systemdersiebenwelten]

I studied philosophy and specialized in the philosophy of language. You have been able to illustrate these complex connections in a really wonderful way. I really like this and am especially happy about the fact that such abstract themes seem to find an audience. Thank you!

[@NeverMakingVideos]

Is there any place where this myth lines up with reality, from what you know of your field? I can understand it may have been speculated it into existence, with enough cases of ancient languages not having the same words for colour as modern English. But it's also fairly obvious to me that a concept "not existing" in language does not mean the concept is alien to native speakers. Surely they could have just said something was sky or ocean coloured. Plenty of languages have words with no direct translation into English for concepts that can still be easily understood - just not with a single word. Schadenfreude is not a uniquely German sensation after all, or saudade Portuguese

[@vickibicknell884]

Brilliant talk. Thanks!

[@MA-iridium]

Amasing!! Cheers mate at least someone informed and congruent.