Thais haemastoma from which Tyrian purple is extracted ( CC BY-SA 4.0) Bust of Emperor Nero by Thomas Della Porta There was even legislation that dictated who could or couldn’t wear the color. This dye was beloved throughout the ancient world, and because it was so expensive and hard to come by, it was automatically associated with power and royalty. It took 250,000 shellfish to produce one ounce of dye, and these shellfish were hunted to the point of near extinction. When squeezed or prodded, this gland produces a single drop of clear garlic-smelling liquid that when exposed to sunlight, turns from green to blue, and then finally to a dark reddish purple. It was originally derived from two varieties of shellfish found in the Mediterranean, produced by a pale gland in its body. This is especially true when you look at the origin of a dye called Tyrian purple.
People have long associated the color purple with royalty. This pigment is actually still used today in food and cosmetics under the label E120, meaning there’s a good chance that your strawberry yogurt was made with bugs! Purple It took around 70,000 of these bugs to get one pound of raw cochineal dye. It’s typically found in South and Central America, so it was widely used in Aztec and Inca culture. John (CC by 2.0)Ĭochineal is another pigment of red that’s derived from a scale insect of the same name. But hematite eventually fell out of fashion as humans pursued brighter versions of the color red. It’s so prevalent that an anthropologist once claimed that the two consistent markers of human evolution were toolmaking and wearing hematite red. It’s very common in the earth’s crust and found throughout the world. One of the oldest red pigments is called hematite, and it comes from the mineral form of iron oxide–essentially rust. Similar studies have been done at Olympic games and in combat sports with similar results. If you look specifically at soccer teams in the United Kingdom since World War II, teams that wore red during matches statistically did better than they should have. One classic example of how red possibly influences our behavior is in sports. It’s probably the most heavily studied color of the spectrum, and although the data is shaky, it’s thought of as the color with the most measurable impact on our lives. Starting with the color red is fitting because it seems to be the most universally loved color throughout history.
It’s this amazing collection of stories about different colors, the way they’ve been made through history, and the lengths to which people will go to get the brightest splash of color. Here at 99% Invisible, we think about color a lot, so it was really exciting when we came across a beautiful book called The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St.
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