p/language

No word for the color blue

Class divide between those who spoke old english/Germanic and those who spoke French and how combined we got English

I have dived into this "ancient cultures inability to see blue" and found the answer to be not quite spectacular or mind-blowing as the initial claim sounds. Nevertheless it's a fun thing to think about and even neater to see how language and words shapes our ability to perceive colors and tell them apart.  [video]

I ran through some concepts with AI: \--------- If the planet orbits a cooler star than the Sun, the incoming light would contain relatively more yellow, orange, and red light. Rayleigh scattering would still favor shorter wavelengths, but if the star emits less blue to begin with, the whole sky could shift toward pale yellow, cream, or peach. A thicker atmosphere could also scatter blue light so many times that much of it is absorbed before reaching the ground. The light that survives and gets scattered near the surface could be more yellow or orange. A dense atmosphere with absorbing aerosols could create a sky that looks like: mustard yellow, golden, tan, amber, or sepia \--------- It's very possible they didn't have a blue sky.

Thanks!!! No, I don’t think there’s any particularly fascinating conspiracy theory but the reasons why given by so many reputable sources are just plain ridiculous. When I read through anicient texts, most of the material is fantastical, yes, but modern people dismiss all of it as folklore or myth. It’s like the ancients, etc. were lying about everything. We know modern interpretations of history can be skewed, to put it lightly, but we automatically think that a huge body of literature is fiction anyway. I mean, medieval texts show humans as part animal a lot. Was everything metaphorical and symbolic back then?

Ooooh! Thanks! 🙏

Also water isn't actually ever blue except when something else is blue, so it makes sense if there was no blue sky and no blue containers, there'd never be blue water