The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
The Popular Science Monthly, August, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
There is, however, no need to go so far afield in order to illustrate
the primitive use of red ochre. Our own European ancestors followed
exactly the same methods, and the German woman of early ages used red
and yellow ochre to adorn her face and body, while the finds of the
ice age at Schussenquelle, described by Fraas, included a brilliant
red paste (oxide of iron with reindeer fat) evidently intended for
purposes of adornment. Moreover, the early artists of classic times had
precisely the same predilections in color as the aboriginal Australian
artists. Red, white, black and yellow are the dominant colors in the
_Iliad_, and Pliny mentions that the most ancient pictures were painted
in various reds, while at a later date red and yellow predominated. He
also mentions that yellow was the favorite color of women for garments,
and was specially used at marriages, while red being a sacred color
and apt to provoke joy, was used at popular festivals, in the form of
minium and cinnabar, to smear the statues of Jupiter.
This well-nigh universal recognition of the peculiarly intense
emotional tone of red is reflected in language. The color words
of civilized and uncivilized peoples have been investigated with
interesting and on the whole remarkably harmonious results. It is only
necessary here to refer to them briefly in so far as they are related
to our present subject. It seems that in every country the words for
the colors at the red end of the spectrum are of earlier appearance,
more definite and more numerous, than for those at the violet end. On
the Niger it appears that there are only three color words, red, white
and black, and everything that is not white or black is called red. The
careful investigation of the natives of Torres Straits and New Guinea
by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition,
has shown that at Murray Island, Mabuiag and Kiwai there were definite
names for red, less definite for yellow, still less so for green, while
any definite name for blue could not be found. In this way as we pass
from the colors of long wave-length towards those of short wave-length
we find the color nomenclature becoming regularly less definite. In
Kiwai and Murray Island the same word was applied to blue and black,
and at Mabuiag there was a word (for sea-color) which could be applied
either to blue or green, while Australian natives from Fitzroy River
seemed limited to words for red, white and black. In a neighboring
region of Northern Queensland Dr. Walter Roth has reached almost
identical results, the tribes having distinct names for red and yellow,
as applied to ochre, while blue is confounded in nomenclature with
black. In Brazil, again, while all tribes use separate words for red,
yellow, white and black, only one had a word for blue and green. Even
so æsthetic a people as the Japanese have no general words for either
blue or green, and apply the same color word to a green tree and the
unclouded sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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