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The Colour That Haunted History
Manage episode 480378230 series 3502293
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In the 1660s, Isaac Newton sat alone in the dark—and drove a needle behind his eye. Not out of madness, but to understand light.
Centuries earlier, Homer described the sea not as blue, but wine-dark. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, the colour blue is never mentioned. Not once.
This absence haunted William Gladstone. Scholar. Statesman. Obsessive. He scoured ancient texts, The Bible. The Vedas. The Koran. Still no blue. Only silence. Except in Egypt, where the dead were painted in lapis and gods crossed sapphire skies. Why them, and no one else?
Because colour isn’t in the world. It’s in the mind. Filtered through flesh. Warped by biology. Shaped by time. You see three cones. A dog sees two. A mantis shrimp sees sixteen. Who sees reality?
This isn’t just about colour. It’s about perception. Control. Evolution. This is the story of a colour that didn’t exist—until we taught ourselves to see it.
And what else might be out there, hidden in plain sight?
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