It's one of the most common questions asked by both kids and adults.

這是孩子和大人最常問的問題之一。

Unless you're from ancient Greece.

除非你是古希臘人

I know, I know.

我知道，我知道。

You think the country that is now ubiquitously known for beautiful blue rooftops, crystal blue waters and a blue flag would have a longer history with color.

你想，現在這個以美麗的藍色屋頂、清澈的藍色海水和藍色國旗而無處不在的國家，會有更悠久的色彩歷史。

But if you were to read Homer, not that one.

但如果你要讀荷馬，不是那個。

The famous ancient Greek writer from the eighth century BC, you noticed that the word blue isn't mentioned once through thousands of pages of The Iliad and the Odyssey, black is mentioned 170 times white, 100 red, 13 times yellow and green each around 10.

公元前八世紀的古希臘著名作家，你注意到《伊利亞特》和《奧德賽》幾千頁的書中，藍色這個詞一次都沒有提到，黑色被提到170次白色，100次紅色，13次黃色，綠色各10次左右。

But blue never appears.

但藍色從未出現過。

What's weirder is that Homer describes things that we would normally call blue, like the ocean as wine dark.

更詭異的是，荷馬把我們平時所說的藍色的東西，比如大海描述成酒色。

He even calls honey green and sheep violet.

他甚至稱蜂蜜為綠色、羊紫。

For a while, some suggested that maybe the ancient Greeks just saw colors different than we do.

有一段時間，有人提出，也許古希臘人只是看到的顏色和我們不同。

Or maybe they were all colorblind.

也可能他們都是色盲。

But we now know that color vision developed around 30 million years ago, so that's not it.

但我們現在知道，色覺是在3000萬年前發展起來的，所以不是這樣的。

It gets even crazier.

它變得更加瘋狂。

As historians and researchers began looking into other ancient civilizations, they realized the same thing.

當歷史學家和研究人員開始研究其他古文明時，他們也意識到了同樣的問題。

Almost none of them used the word blue from Icelandic text to ancient Indian epics dating to about four millennia ago to ancient Chinese writings and even the original Hebrew Bible.

從冰島文字到約四千年前的古印度史詩，再到中國古籍，甚至希伯來聖經原文，幾乎無一不使用藍色一詞。

All of them failed to mention blue once, while all of them that mentioned black, white and red and many the Bible included also mentioned green and yellow again.

所有的人都沒有提到過一次藍色，而所有提到過黑、白、紅的人，以及很多《聖經》也都再次提到過綠色和黃色。

It's not like they don't talk about things that we would call blue.

他們也不是不談我們稱之為藍色的東西。

They describe the ocean as wide, stormy, silent but never blew.

他們形容大海寬闊，暴風驟雨，無聲無息，但從不吹風。

It wasn't until the mid 18 hundreds that linguists began toe, analyze the history of languages and found something peculiar in every culture, black and white.

直到18世紀中葉，語言學家才開始趾，分析語言的歷史，發現每一種文化中都有一些奇特的東西，無論黑白。

Our first, then the first color to enter the language is always red.

我們的第一，那麼進入語言的第一種顏色永遠是紅色。

Then yellow follows, then green, and then blue is the final color to enter language in every single culture.

然後黃色緊隨其後，然後是綠色，然後藍色是每一種文化中最後進入語言的顏色。

Over the years, researchers have found some minor exceptions, with the middle order so green and yellow.

多年來，研究人員發現了一些小的例外，中間的順序如此青黃不接。

But red is always first, and blue is always last in every single language.

但在每一種語言中，紅色永遠是第一，藍色永遠是最後。

So why this order?

那為什麼要下這個命令呢？

There's two main theories.

主要有兩種理論。

First, the evolutionary explanation is simple.

首先，進化論的解釋很簡單。

Black and white help distinguish between night and day light and dark and are the most clear and useful.

黑白有助於區分黑夜和白天的明暗，是最清晰有用的。

So every culture has those then read.

所以每個文化都有這些，那麼就讀。

It's often associated with blood or danger.

它經常與血或危險聯繫在一起。

Even human faces and communication use read through the galvanic skin response, like when you blush or are stressed.

即使是人的面孔和交流，也會使用通過皮膚的電波反應來閱讀，比如當你臉紅或壓力大的時候。

Green and yellow entered language as the need to distinguish between ripe and unripe foods and blue.

綠色和黃色進入語言，是區分成熟和未成熟的食物和藍色的需要。

There's very few blue things that we actually interact with.

我們真正與之互動的藍色事物很少。

Blue fruits are pretty rare.

藍色的果實是相當罕見的。

Blue animals are rare to, and when they are blue, it's often not a pigment but a sort of light illusion, like in butterflies.

藍色的動物是很少見的，當它們是藍色的時候，往往不是一種色素，而是一種光的錯覺，比如蝴蝶。

Even the modern European language words for blue are derived from ancient words for black or green.

即使是現代歐洲語言中的藍色詞彙，也是由古代的黑色或綠色詞彙衍生而來。

The second explanation suggests that these words don't enter language until humans could make them read being the easiest and most accessible color because you could just take a piece of dry clay and use it as a crayon.

第二種解釋認為，這些文字在人類可以讓它們閱讀之前，並沒有進入語言是最簡單、最容易獲得的顏色，因為你可以直接拿一塊乾燥的粘土作為蠟筆使用。

If you think of cave drawings, for example, there's a law of black and red in them but blue.

比如說你想到洞庭畫，洞庭畫裡有一個規律，就是黑色和紅色，但是藍色。

It's one of the hardest colors to create.

這是最難創造的顏色之一。

For thousands of years, nobody had it except the Egyptians, and they had a word for it.

幾千年來，除了埃及人，誰也沒有，他們有一個詞來形容它。

So does this mean that ancient people couldn't see those colors before they had a word for it?

那麼，這是否意味著，古人在沒有文字之前，是看不到這些顏色的？

Not exactly.

不完全是

Early humans would have considered colors as simply hues of black, white or red, which sounds kind of crazy.

早期的人類會認為顏色只是黑色、白色或紅色的色調，這聽起來有點瘋狂。

But there's actually modern day evidence for this.

但其實現代也有證據。

If you look at these 12 colors, can you spot the one that's different?

如果你看這12種顏色，你能發現哪種顏色不一樣嗎？

We might think clearly it's this one.

我們可能會想清楚是這個。

But when presented with a similar chart, the Himba People of Namibia who don't have a separate word for blue take longer to point out this distinction.

但當看到類似的圖表時，那密比亞的Himba人沒有單獨的藍色詞彙，他們需要更長的時間來指出這種區別。

On the contrary, when looking at green colors there, Mork quickly able to note the difference that we wouldn't catch as quickly this one.

相反，當在那裡看綠色的顏色時，莫克很快就能注意到我們不會像這個一樣迅速抓住的不同。

And this is because they have mawr words for types of green than we do in English.

這是因為他們比我們的英語有更多的詞彙來表示綠色的類型。

In fact, one of their color categories clumps some types of blue and green together, while they have other color categories for different greens.

事實上，他們的一個顏色類別將一些類型的藍色和綠色聚集在一起，而他們有其他顏色類別的不同綠色。

Still, in the 18 nineties, anthropologists discovered that indigenous Islanders in New Guinea described the sky as black or dirty like water, which, if you think about it, isn't that surprising.

不過，在十九世紀的十八世紀，人類學家還是發現，新幾內亞的土著島民把天空描述成黑色或像水一樣的髒東西，仔細想想，也不是很奇怪。

Even if you look at a color picker in Photoshop, it's clear that a dark or navy blue isn't actually that far from being black and is quite far from other Hughes, which we would still call blue.

即使你在Photoshop中用顏色選取器來看，也可以清楚地看到，深藍色或藏青色其實與黑色相差不大，與其他的休斯色相差甚遠，我們還是會稱之為藍色。

In that sense, black would have been a much broader term for early in ancient humans.

從這個意義上說，黑色應該是古人類早期更廣泛的稱呼。

It's kind of like how these are all shades of red.

這有點像這些都是深淺不一的紅色。

We wouldn't call them different colors necessarily.

我們不一定會稱它們為不同的顏色。

But this in English, we call pink, even though it's technically just another shade of red.

但這個在英語中，我們稱之為粉紅色，儘管它在技術上只是另一種紅色的陰影。

We've decided to categorize it as separate, and as a result, it's different in our minds.

我們決定把它單獨歸類，是以，在我們的心目中，它是不同的。

Of course, even if we didn't name it pink, we'd still be able to see that it's a different color, a lighter hue.

當然，即使我們不給它取名粉色，也能看出它是另一種顏色，一種淺色調。

But ultimately we'd consider it a form of red.

但最終我們會認為這是一種紅色的形式。

Now you might be thinking this just seemed semantic.

現在你可能會想，這似乎只是語義。

So what?

那又怎樣？

They have different names.

他們有不同的名字。

There's no functional difference in the actual color we're seeing.

我們看到的實際顏色沒有功能上的區別。

But neuroscience has found that to be untrue turns out, and this is mind blowing that language trains our brain to see colors differently.

但神經科學發現，原來是不真實的，這讓人大吃一驚，語言可以訓練我們的大腦看到不同的顏色。

What this means is, once we have a new word for our color, there's a feedback loop in the brain, and this exaggerates the differences between those colors, especially at the border areas between them.

這意味著，一旦我們的顏色有了新詞，大腦中就會有一個反饋迴路，這就會誇大這些顏色之間的差異，尤其是在它們之間的邊界區域。

We get used to calling these colors as distinct hues, and as a result, the brain more happily sees them as distinct use.

我們習慣於把這些顏色稱為獨特的色調，是以，大腦更樂於把它們看作是獨特的用途。

Without the word, you would still see the color, but you wouldn't notice or contextualized it in the same way.

如果沒有這個詞，你仍然會看到這個顏色，但你不會以同樣的方式注意到或背景。

If that still feels bizarre, because I know it did for me, think about learning a new language.

如果還是覺得怪異，因為我知道對我來說是這樣，那就想想學習一門新的語言吧。

At first, everything just looks or sounds like gibberish.

一開始，一切都只是看起來或聽起來像胡言亂語。

You can't tell the verbs apart from the downs, let alone one word from the next, because you are just learning.

你分不清動詞和下位，更別提一個詞和下位了，因為你才剛剛學會。

But slowly, over time, your brain starts to pick up on these categories and patterns and can recognize minor differences much faster.

但慢慢地，隨著時間的推移，你的大腦開始發現這些類別和模式，並能更快地識別微小的差異。

It's not like you couldn't tell the words were different before, but it all sort of blended together.

之前也不是看不出來這些字不一樣，但都有點混在一起了。

Once you become more familiar with it, you start to see and hear those words much more clearly.

一旦你對它越來越熟悉，你就會開始更清楚地看到和聽到這些話。

Honestly, it's kind of like when I learned a new English word, and then suddenly I hear it everywhere I see it everywhere, but the truth is, I probably came across that word before but just didn't notice it.

說實話，這有點像我學了一個新的英語單詞，然後突然聽到到處都是我看到的，但事實上，我可能以前遇到過這個單詞，但只是沒有注意到它。

But now that I've truly learned the word.

但現在，我已經真正學會了這個詞。

The feedback loop is there, and so I truly notice it.

反饋環在那裡，所以我真正注意到了它。

It's a wild example of how are amazing.

這是一個狂熱的例子，如何都是驚人的。

Brains have allowed us to create language.

大腦讓我們創造了語言。

But then that language turned back around and has an impact on brain function.

但後來這種語言又轉回來了，對大腦功能有影響。

Not only is our perception of the world an illusion, our brains are an active part of creating it.

不僅我們對世界的認知是一種幻覺，我們的大腦也是創造這種幻覺的積極分子。

Thank you so much for watching.

謝謝你的觀看。

I hope you found it as interesting as I genuinely did.

我希望你和我一樣，真心覺得有趣。

If you like our videos, make sure you subscribe to make sure you leave it like on this video.

如果你喜歡我們的視頻，請確保你訂閱，確保你離開它喜歡這個視頻。

And you can join our mailing list with the link in the description.

您可以通過描述中的鏈接加入我們的郵件列表。

Otherwise, we will see you next time for a new science video piece.

否則，我們下次再來看新的科普視頻作品。