The pursue for the lost color blue!

The pursue for the lost color blue!

Of all the colors, blue is probably the most restful. For some, it represents freedom, peace or modernity. When we look at the azure sky or when we go on a sea voyage where borders disappear, a vast blueness greets us. Since blue is the color of the heavens and waters, it is also signified by infinity and imagination. Many people are attracted to this color, which gives peace to the human soul. Edip Cansever once said "Blue is not a color for me, it is a habit”. Louise Bourgeois, Yves Klein and Wassily Kandinsky often preferred the color blue as a method of expression in their works. Do you know that it is not possible to find this color, which is indispensable in today's society, in Homer's Odysseus, in the holy books or in ancient stories?

The famous description of the sea in Homer's Odysseus work was written as the color of dark wine. in 1858, the scientist William Gladstone noticed and suspected this situation while reading the Odyssey. Gladstone counted the references to color in the poem one by one. There were 200 references for black and about 100 for white. There were 15 for red, and less than 10 for yellow and green. Gladstone then checked other Ancient Greek works and came across the same situation. The surprising thing is that there was no blue color identification in any article. He couldn't even find a word to match blue. The color blue was also not mentioned in the Bible, the Holy Quran, ancient Chinese stories, or Icelandic epics. The color blue was totally missing in these works, the total of which amounted to tens of thousands of pages!

The philologist Lazarus Geiger investigated when blue was first mentioned in languages. Black and white were the colors defined first in all languages. Later, red, the color of blood and danger, was emerging. After the red, it was yellow and green. The interesting thing is that the last color that appeared in all languages was blue. Until a color was produced by people, a word was not used for that color. Red has the most easily produced pigments, while blue has the most difficult-to-produce pigments. In addition, the Egyptians were the only ancient society to have used a word for blue. The Egyptians were also the first people to produce blue paint. Does the fact that there is was no word for blue indicate that those people could not distinguish it? The answer is yes. People have a hard time thinking about any phenomenon that is not in the language. If blue is not defined, this color cannot be distinguished from green.