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Why ancient civilizations couldn’t see the color blue

It was the last color to appear in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew.

ancient languages, color perception, blue color, color words, language evolution, Homer, The Odyssey, wine dark sea, Himba tribe, Jules Davidoff, Tech Insider, color psychology, language and vision, cultural linguistics, color history, Greek language, color naming, visual perception, color experiment, linguistic relativity

A picture is worth 1,000 words, as long as the right words exist.

Image from YouTube video.
By Leo Shvedsky,
Leo Shvedsky
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GOOD Staff
GOOD Staff
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Aug 09, 2025

Ancient civilizations had no word for the color blue. It was the last color to appear in many languages, including Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Hebrew. In The Odyssey, Homer describes the “wine-dark” sea. According to one linguist, every culture begins with words for dark and light. The next color described is red, then yellow and green, and finally blue.

Does this mean, as this video by Tech Insider asks, that you really can’t “see something if you don’t have a word for it”?

That may be the case. The Himba tribe in Namibia has no word for blue.

color history, Greek language, color naming, visual perception, color experiment, linguistic relativity It's difficult to imagine seeing a color and not having the word for it. Canva

In an experiment, psychologist Jules Davidoff studied the Himba and concluded that without a word for a color, it is more difficult to differentiate that color from others. So even though our eyes could perceive the color blue, “we may not have noticed it was unique until much later.”


This article originally appeared last year.

ancient languagesblue colorcolor experimentcolor historycolor namingcolor perceptioncolor psychologycolor wordscultural linguisticsgreek languagehimba tribehomerjules davidofflanguage and visionlanguage evolutionlinguistic relativityask chatgpttech insiderthe odysseyvisual perceptionwine dark seapast events

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