Many discussions have centered around the diminishing presence of color in the twenty-first century. Once, our surroundings boasted a rich spectrum of hues, but nowadays, it feels like everything has shifted towards a limited palette of grays, browns, blacks, and whites. Perhaps this era of “color loss” can be likened to a period of ascetic repentance following a prolonged feast. This analogy extends beyond mere aesthetics: technology and industrialization not only made food abundant and affordable but also had the same effect on colors.
There was a time when colors were a luxury. While people had access to blacks, reds, and browns, producing pigments for uncommon hues involved extraordinary efforts, often requiring journeys to distant lands (or in the case of ultramarine blue, deep sea diving). For centuries, dating back to Julius Caesar’s time, purple symbolized royalty. This was no random choice—Caesar’s preferred “Tyrian purple” was incredibly costly due to the complex extraction process from the glands of a specific Mediterranean sea snail. You can delve deeper into this fascinating process in the Business Insider video here.
“Thousands of snails were needed to yield a single ounce of purple dye,” writes Sonja Anderson for Smithsonian.com, citing Pliny the Elder. Despite being well-documented for several decades, ongoing archaeological excavations related to ancient purple dye production continue to unveil new scientific insights. “Archaeologists uncovered two Mycenaean structures while digging in the Bronze Age settlement of Kolonna on the Greek island of Aegina,” Anderson notes. “As detailed in a study published in the journal PLOS ONE, these buildings date back to the 16th century B.C.E. The older structure contained pottery with pigmented designs, grinding tools, and piles of discarded mollusk shells—clear signs of a purple dye workshop.”
Interestingly, these remarkably preserved ruins from 3,600 years ago predate the era when purple symbolized power. “There’s no evidence in the Bronze Age that purple represented authority or that purple garments were exclusively reserved for the elite or leaders, as was the case in later Roman or Byzantine periods,” notes archaeologist Lydia Berger, co-author of the study. The knowledge of Tyrrian purple was lost with the fall of the Byzantine Empire, only to be rediscovered in modern times. Despite occasional whispers of color resurgence, a return to a vibrant purple leading the charge would evoke a sense of historical satisfaction. And there is one cultural icon in particular who would surely give their approval.
Source: Smithsonian
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
