The speculation in this article is pretty bad; a shower of cosmic rays isn't going to affect everyone in the planet the same way to all of a sudden enhance their perception of violet. The much likelier explanation is that it's "just" a cultural development.
> Egypt, Mesopotamia and the medieval Islamic cultures survived especially well in their extremely dry climates. And they had no violet in them at all.
In ancient times purple was a luxury for dying clothes, even in medieval times, and harvesting sea snails for the dye was lucrative business between egyptians, phoeniceans etc. so how come they claim we can't see it?
I dont think their claim is true. What's next? "Why it took us decades to see rounded corners"?
Consider the color orange. There wasn't a name for the color in antiquity. When the fruit become available, its color was referred to as "the color of a norange" (this happened independently in various European languages. Unrelated factoid, many languages with an indefinite article that ends with n, assimilated the leading n of the fruit name in the article).
Clearly our ancestors could see the orange colored before they met the fruit. There are other fruit that have that color too; leaves in autumn can be pretty orange too. Orange and brown are basically different shades of the same color.
What does that have to do with "seeing the color". Of course there are words for many exact things that are typical examples of some colors. People couldn't see a particular mid-dark red before Ferrari? Bianchi celeste color? Surf green Stratocaster? Or maybe when Pantone launched their color reference system, people then suddenly started seeing them? Think how walking in a meadow must have felt after seeing all the Pantone colors with their codes, and then really seeing the flowers' colors for the first time?!
This doesn't mean people didn't see the color beforehand. It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily.
Orange (red-yellow) is a tertiary color. Most tertiary colors are named for things.
Chartreuse (yellow-green) is named for a liquor and was first used in 1764, much more recently than orange.
Azure (blue-cyan) is named for lapis-lazuli.
Rose (magenta-red) is named for the flower.
Turquoise (green-cyan) is named for the gem, with its etymology only in the 17th century.
Violet (magenta-blue) is actually unique in that it's the only tertiary color that isn't named for something. Its name comes from the proto-Indo-European word for purple. (In this case, purple is the color named for a thing).
The process continues for further subdivided color. Most quarternary colors don't have distinct well-accepted names, but some like scarlet, fuschia, and aquamarine are reasonably accepted.
If you've gotten through life calling things yellow-green instead of using the word chartreuse, you know how people got through life without using the word orange.
I do appreciate the feet-on-the ground research sentiment
"Over the past 20 years, I visited 193 museums in 42 different countries. Equipped with 1,500 Munsell colour chips .. I examined 139,892 works of art, searching for violet. ... there were only .. few artworks before the 1860s"
And the art historical conclusion feels convincing
"in 1864 the influential French art critic Charles Blanc ... described how violet, produced by mixing red and blue, is intensified by placing it next to yellow."
But unfortunately the last paragraph kind of places this immediately into pseudoscientific territory IMO. I wish humanists who do interesting research would not add nonsensical flourish like this:
" I can’t help but wonder whether a muon shower might have enhanced our ability to see violet midway through the 19th century on Earth."
Well, you could mix it from blue and red. But if there are no subjects that are actually violet I presume you lack the incentive to incorporate this color. Violet cloths result in violet subjects etc.
The observation of lack of violet before 19th century is interesting no matter which pedestrian explanation is the most correct one.
This is completely ignoring the fact that for a long time, purple/violet dyes were really rare and expensive. "Royal purple" was called that because only royalty could afford it.
This fact is completely addressed in the article, pointing out that aquamarine and other colors were expensive as well yet it never stopped the artists.
Tyrian purple was way more expensive than ultramarine. It required vast numbers of snails for very small amounts of dye. When royalty couldn't afford it, the production method was lost very quickly.
In addition, I'm pretty sure it didn't have a stable solid form. It also wasn't a particularly stable color (Tyrian purple robes would change color over time).
Both of those, by themselves, would be enough to preclude its use by artists. The cost was just adding insult to injury.
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In ancient times purple was a luxury for dying clothes, even in medieval times, and harvesting sea snails for the dye was lucrative business between egyptians, phoeniceans etc. so how come they claim we can't see it?
I dont think their claim is true. What's next? "Why it took us decades to see rounded corners"?
Clearly our ancestors could see the orange colored before they met the fruit. There are other fruit that have that color too; leaves in autumn can be pretty orange too. Orange and brown are basically different shades of the same color.
Naming things is pretty powerful thing.
This doesn't mean people didn't see the color beforehand. It is surprising that these kind of categorical errors get forwarded so easily.
Chartreuse (yellow-green) is named for a liquor and was first used in 1764, much more recently than orange.
Azure (blue-cyan) is named for lapis-lazuli.
Rose (magenta-red) is named for the flower.
Turquoise (green-cyan) is named for the gem, with its etymology only in the 17th century.
Violet (magenta-blue) is actually unique in that it's the only tertiary color that isn't named for something. Its name comes from the proto-Indo-European word for purple. (In this case, purple is the color named for a thing).
The process continues for further subdivided color. Most quarternary colors don't have distinct well-accepted names, but some like scarlet, fuschia, and aquamarine are reasonably accepted.
If you've gotten through life calling things yellow-green instead of using the word chartreuse, you know how people got through life without using the word orange.
I think the whole naming of "orange" had to do with the fact that the need arose to actually discriminate the fruit you wanted by its color
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/a-norange.html
Deleted Comment
"Over the past 20 years, I visited 193 museums in 42 different countries. Equipped with 1,500 Munsell colour chips .. I examined 139,892 works of art, searching for violet. ... there were only .. few artworks before the 1860s"
And the art historical conclusion feels convincing
"in 1864 the influential French art critic Charles Blanc ... described how violet, produced by mixing red and blue, is intensified by placing it next to yellow."
But unfortunately the last paragraph kind of places this immediately into pseudoscientific territory IMO. I wish humanists who do interesting research would not add nonsensical flourish like this:
" I can’t help but wonder whether a muon shower might have enhanced our ability to see violet midway through the 19th century on Earth."
The observation of lack of violet before 19th century is interesting no matter which pedestrian explanation is the most correct one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
In addition, I'm pretty sure it didn't have a stable solid form. It also wasn't a particularly stable color (Tyrian purple robes would change color over time).
Both of those, by themselves, would be enough to preclude its use by artists. The cost was just adding insult to injury.
I will point out that this seems like plagiarism.
"...the retina is actually an extension of the brain, formed embryonically from neural tissue and connected to the brain by the optic nerve."
From: https://www.britannica.com/science/retina
"...The retina is actually an extension of the brain, formed embryonically from neural tissue and connected to the brain proper by the optic nerve."
The earth is barreling through ancient supernovae remains... hand wave hand wave... violet!
Although it was about a tannery, they show how the violet / purple color was extracted from shells. Quite an elaborate procedure.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr5OZbF0XyA