The ancient Greek poet, Homer, lived between the 7th and 8th century BC and is widely regarded as the finest of the ancient epic poets. His two masterpieces, The Odyssey and it's sequel, The Iliad, have been studied for centuries and have influenced literature throughout history.
Oddly enough, Homer barely describes the colours of objects or the environment at all. And when he does, he seems to get it a little confused, using terms like "wine-coloured" for both oxen and the sky!
It turns out Homer was not colour blind, but was struggling with deficiencies in the ancient Greek language. The language simply did not have terms for the colour blue. This curious phenomenon was not exclusive to ancient Greek, but can be found in many ancient languages.
Research has shown that colour words emerge in a language over time, and in a predictable manner. For instance, black and white are always first, followed by red, yellow, green and finally blue. The sequence of colours is purely practical, with red being the colour of blood and the easiest dye to make, while yellow and green are the colours of vegetation.
The colour blue, aside from the sky, is rarely found in nature and is a very difficult dye to make, thus the word to describe it evolved much later in a language's development.
