One fascinating study that was revealed earlier this year, but gained little attention from the mainstream media, is the possibility that humans didn't have the ability to see the color blue until recently. Well, recently in comparison with how long humans have been around at least. The study combined aspects of literature and science to come up with the hypothesis.
One example the study cites is Homer's Odyssey. While Homer uses black and white as descriptions of colors in his work quite a lot and then red and green less so, he never once uses the color blue. Instead of describing the sea as being blue in color, Homer describes the sea as a 'wine-dark sea'. In other ancient Greek works, the sky is often described as yellow or red in color.
According to a philologist named Lazarus Geiger, even ancient China, Iceland, Hindu, Arabic, and Hebrew texts make no mention of the color. Egyptians were the first of the ancient cultures to use the word and that could possibly be because they were theorized to be the first culture to be able to produce blue dyes.
Presently, it was discovered that not all humans could detect the color blue. A tribe of people called Himba, located in Namibia, a country located in the southwest portion of the African continent was part of this study. The Himba tribe didn't have a word for the color blue and when their eye sight was tested, couldn't tell the color green apart from the color blue. Scientists showed tribal members eleven green squares and one blue square, but couldn't pick out the blue square.
Could it be possible that our ancestors really couldn't see blue? If so, it can be speculated that humans in the last few thousand years have undergone evolution when it comes to colors that humans can see. If this is true, are there any other colors humans will be able to see thousands of years from now that we as a species can't see today?
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