A MYSTERIOUS RUNE STONE IN ONTARIO HAS BEEN DECIPHERED:

Ontario rune-stone. Illustration from Ancient-origins.com.

A mysterious carved boulder in Ontario has now determined to be inscribed with a long inscription in runes, as well as a nearby petroglyph of a boat surrounded by crucifixes.

“Archaeologists have cracked the code of 255 mysterious symbols carved into a rock in Canada more than 200 years ago. The writing was discovered in 2018 after a fallen tree revealed the square-shaped inscription near the town of Wawa, located about 155 miles from the nearest US border crossing in Michigan.” (Liberatore 2025) This strikes me as a terrible way for the whole story to start, being found under a fallen tree sounds like the backstory of the Kensington Rune Stone.

Rune panel carved on Ontario rune-stone. Internet image, public domain.

“Ryan Primrose, an archaeologist from the Ontario Center for Archaeological Education, has identified the characters as Nordic runes, part of an old alphabet once used in Sweden and other parts of Scandinavia.” (Liberatore 2025)

Primrose studied the carved symbols for seven years. The rock bears 255 symbols lined up like writing as well as an image of a boat. With the help of Swedish researcher Henrick Williams, Primrose finally solved the riddle. The markings spell out a 1611 version of the Lord’s Prayer in Swedish.

“It was a surprising find in the middle of Canada, but researchers later discovered that Swedish workers were hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1800s to work at remote trading posts – suggesting one of them may have made the carving.” (Liberatore 2025)

Boat carving and crucifixes by Ontario rune-stone. Photograph by Ryan Primrose from the Ontario Center for Archaeological Education.

“The carved boat, containing 16 figures and marked by 14 crosses, hints at a deeper symbolic meaning hidden within the mysterious runestone. Experts are still undecided on whether it served for communal worship or was just the project of one person.” (Brucker 2025) This is a little confusing – the 14 crosses are not on the boat, but are divided up into two groups on either side of the carved boat, with five on the left and nine on the right. No explanation or speculation so far whether there is any significance to the numbers 16, 14, 5 or 9. It may be that the boat represents the trip over to Canada from Sweden by the workers.

The Ontario rune-stone. Photograph by Ryan Primrose from the Ontario Center for Archaeological Education.

 “Scholars are still struggling with core mysteries: why is this text here, of all places, in the boondocks of northwestern Ontario? Was it part of a gathering-place for spiritual reflection, or the creative act of a loner? The reason for the deliberate burial is also still unknown. Ongoing archival work and site analysis may yet bring answers to these lingering questions.” (Brucker 2025) Given the location I am going to assume that this was the personal obsession of an eccentric loner working for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

It also appears to have been intentionally buried although available articles do not explain the relationship to the tree, was it intentionally planted or a natural growth from the intervening 200 years. Let us hope that archival work in records of the Hudson’s Bay Company eventually turns up references that will help explain the history of this inscription. In the meantime it is an interesting curiosity.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Archaeology, 2025, Mystery of Strange Canadian Rock Carvings, 18 June 2025, Ontario Centre for Archaeological Research and Education. https://archaeology.org. Accessed online 19 June 2025.

Brucker, Miles, 2025, Researchers deciphered a mysterious runestone found in a forest in Canada, 3 July 2025, Things, https://www.factinate.com. Accessed online 3 July 2025.

Liberatore, Stacy, 2025, Mysterious carving with biblical message linked to Jesus’ crucifixtion found in North America, 16 June 2025, Dailymail.com. Accessed online 19 June 2025.

DUCK-HEADED FIGURES REVISITED:

Bird-headed figure, Kiva Point, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 1981.

RockArtBlog has previously visited the subject of bird-headed figures in 2011 and 2016 (see references below) but it has come back up in an article by Eric A. Powell in Archaeology magazine.

Tracing of figure with a duck on his head. Procession panel, Combs Ridge, near Butler Wash, Utah.

Just to reset the stage, there are essentially two kinds of bird-headed figures. On kind is an anthropomorph with a bird sitting on top of his head. The second kind has the head replaced by a bird. In this column I am going to limit my comments to bird-headed figures surmounted by what seem to be ducks.

Bird-headed figure from Muley Point, John's Canyon, Utah. Illustration from Castleton, Petroglyphs and Pictographs of Utah, Vol. 2, 1984, Fig. 7.78, p. 239.

In the July/August issue of Archaeology magazine, an excellent article by Eric Powell (2025) credits the creation of figures of anthropomorphs with ducks resting on their head to the Basketmaker culture. “Around AD 550, Basketmaker artists began to focus on depicting groups of simplified human figures rather than emphasizing individuals. In the canyonlands surrounding the San Juan River, crane, quail, and the occasional turkey are shown alongside humans but ducks resting on the heads of human figures dominate the bestiary of this later Basketmaker rock art.” (Powell 2025:48) Basketmaker is the name given to archaic cultures represented in the American southwest running from as early as possibly 7,000 BCE to 750 CE. (Wikipedia)

Flock of ducks and duck-headed figures. Photograph by Jim Larkey, image 45170426.

In his article Powell mentions various potential meanings for the figure of an anthropomorph with a duck on its head to the Basketmaker people. One possibility mentioned is that it is the symbol for a “duck clan.” Another possibility discussed is some sort of deity. “Some archaeologists have speculated that ducks represented a single Basketmaker clan, much as animals symbolize modern-day Pueblo kin groups, including the Hopi Bear and Spider Clans. In this scenario, the duck-head figures would have served as a kind of logo for a clan whose descendants eventually spread throughout the region. Other scholars have proposed that the duck-head figures might all have been meant to depict a single deity. Schaafsma believes clues to the importance of ducks might lie in present-day Pueblo oral traditions that give these birds a special role. According to traditions of the Zuni people in western New Mexico, a duck guides the blind god Kiaklo as he wanders the Earth.” (Powell 2025:50)

Duck-headed figure, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Train Rock -2, Colorado. Photograph John and Daphne Rudolph, 1991.

Ducks are unique creatures in the animal world because of their abilities to travel under the water and on it, on the land and through the sky. Later Pueblo people’s beliefs that the duck was a messenger to the katsinas may have been handed down from the Basketmaker cultural pantheon. “Ancestral Zuni spirits are also believed to transform into ducks to travel between Zuni Pueblo and a lake known as Kolhuwalaaw'a, the  underwater home of the spirits. These beliefs were recorded some 1,500 years after Basketmaker people created images of duck-head figures. Nevertheless, Schaafsma says these oral traditions suggest that people in the Four Comers region revered the duck's ability to travel through many realms with ease. "The duck is at home in the sky, walks on the land, swims on the water, and dives under the water for minutes at a time," she says. "Of all the birds, ducks seem to most explicitly traverse a layered cosmos." For the Basketmaker people, combining themselves with an animal that possessed the adaptive abilities of the duck would have been especially meaningful, says art historian Anna Blume of the Fashion Institute of Technology. "These are real powerful hybrids," she says. "In the imagination of the people who made them, these murals would have given them access to that special connection." (Powell 2025:50)

Closeup of Bird-headed figure, Kiva Point, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 1981.

On March 5, 2011, I posted a column that was titled BIRD-HEADED FIGURES. In this I presented a petroglyph panel from Kiva Point on the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation in southeastern Colorado that includes a portrayal of an Ancestral Puebloan figure with a duck-like bird perched on its head, and I pointed out the fact that Lovelock Cave in Nevada held 3,000-year-old duck decoys. I cited Sandra Olsen's description of their creation and use: "Remarkable preservation at Lovelock Cave, Nevada, has led to the recovery of 3,000-year-old duck decoys - - - that were made by stretching a bird skin over a tule reed form. Many ethnographic reports describe hunters putting duck skins - on their heads as they swam right up to live ducks. They captured the ducks by grabbing their feet and pulling them underwater, so as not to disturb other nearby fowl." (Olsen 1998:104) I suggest that the Basketmaker fascination with duck-headed figures may be a tradition passed down from this early duck hunting technique.

Tule reed duck decoys, Lovelock Cave, Nevada.

In 1985 Rob Buchanan wrote about the findings in a cache in Lovelock Cave. This discovery was made by M. R. Harrington of New York City’s Museum of the American Indian in 1924. “This contained eleven remarkable decoys made of rushes, most of them feathered and painted to represent ducks. The decoys, which resemble  canvas-back drakes, were about 11 inches long, their bodies formed by 25 or 30 large bulrush stems bound in a tight hairpin and trimmed at the ends to simulate a duck’s tail. A billed head, smoothly tied with split reeds, was sewed fast to each body. White feathers were attached lengthwise to the body with twing. ‘Some waterfowl hunter had hid his decoys here against another season,’ concluded Harrington.” (Buchanan 1985) The finding of such a group of duck decoys provides strong evidence to back up Olsen’s testimony.

This becomes more likely when we see climatic data suggesting that the climate in the American southwest was wetter during the Basketmaker period. V.J. Polyak et al., studied past climates in the record preserved in a stalagmite. “Here, we report data from stalagmite HC-1, from Hidden Cave, Guadalupe Mountains, New Mexico, covering the past 3400 years, showing an interval of increased frequency of droughts from 1260 to 370 yr B2K that is coeval with the entire pre-Hispanic Pueblo period. Our record suggests that this Puebloan Late Holocene climatic interval was the most arid and highly variable climatic period of the last 3400 years. Climatic conditions favoring the introduction of cultivation existed prior to the Pueblo period during more pluvial-like conditions from at least 3400 to 1260 yr B2K.” (Polyak et al. 2022) This suggests that wetter climatic conditions of early Basketmaker may have favored duck hunting as part of their subsistence scheme.

Duck-headed figure with flute player, Southwestern Utah. Photograph from Carol Patterson

Referring back to Olsen (1998) I can see Basketmaker duck hunters tying a tule reed duck decoy covered with the skin of a real duck on top of his head, or just pulling the preserved duck skin down over his own head and slipping gently into lake Lahontan to collect dinner. Powell (2025) did not include that interpretation as a possibility, but given the wetter climate of the American southwest during the Basketmaker era I believe it should be considered a strong possibility. As a final thought, if these figures do not represent duck hunters then I suggest that they may represent dance costumes. Indeed, in some places the duck headed figures are accompanied by flute-players, suggesting some kind of ritual situation. This would mean that the Lovelock Cave findings, interpreted as duck decoys, would be dance headdresses instead, but given Olsen’s (1998) testimony I personally favor the duck hunting interpretation.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Buchanan, Rob, 1985, When it came to duck decoys the Paiute Indians made them to last, 25 February 1985, Sports Illustrated Vault online. https://vault.si.com. Accessed online 22 June 2025.

Faris, Peter, 2016, Bird-Headed Figures Revisited, 5 March 2016, https://www.rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Faris, Peter, 2011, Bird-Headed Figures, 5 March 2011, https://www.rockartblog.blogspot.com.

Olsen, Sandra L., 1998,   Animals in American Indian Life: An Overview, pages 95-118, in Stars Above, Earth Below: American Indians and Nature, Marsha C. Bol, editor,  Roberts Rinehart Publishers, Niwot, CO.

Polyak, V.J., Asmerom, Y. and Lachniet, M.S., 2022, Climatic backdrop for Pueblo Cultural development in the southwestern United States. Scientific Relports 12, 8723. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022012220-6.

Powell, Eric A., 2025, Birds of a Feather, Archaeology, July/August 2024, Vol. 78, No. 4. pp. 46-51.

Wikipedia, Basketmaker Culture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basketmaker_culture. Accessed online 5 July 2025.

 

CALENDRICAL INSCRIPTIONS AT GOBEKLI TEPE?

Gobekli Tepe, Turkey. Photograph from fountainmagazine.com.

A new theory has been put forward that inscriptions at Gobekli Tepe, Karahan Tepe and Sayburc in Turkey record a lunisolar calendrical system and also apparently also refer to the proposed comet impact that caused the Younger Dryas period. Well no, they don’t.

Pillar with "V-symbols" at Gobekli Tepe. Internet image, public domain.

In 2024 Martin Sweatman of the Institute of Materials and Processes, at the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering wrote “Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site in southern Turkey, features several temple-like enclosures adorned with many intricately carved symbols. It is located centrally among a group of Taş Tepeler pre-pottery Neolithic sites which include Karahan Tepe and Sayburç. Here, an earlier astronomical interpretation for Gobekli Tepe’s symbolism is supported and extended by showing how V-symbols on Pillar 43 in Enclosure D can be interpreted in terms of a lunisolar calendar system with 11 epagomenal days, which would make it the oldest known example of its type. Furthermore, it is shown how Göbekli Tepe’s 11-pillar enclosures and a megalithic 11-pillar pool structure at nearby Karahan Tepe can also be interpreted in terms of the same lunisolar calendar system. Other V-symbols at Göbekli Tepe are also interpreted in astronomical terms, and it is shown how the Urfa Man statue, a wall carving at Sayburç and a statue at Karahan Tepe that display V-symbol necklaces can be interpreted as time-controlling or creator deities. Symbolic links with later cultures from the Fertile Crescent are explored. Throughout, links are made with the Younger Dryas impact and Cauvin’s theory for the origin of the Neolithic revolution in the Fertile Crescent.” (Sweatman 2024:1) To me this is an example of how an academic can get into trouble when they stray too far out of their own particular field. Just as with Barry Fell’s nonsense, Sweatman’s theories are shaky at best, and **** at the very least. I have nothing against engineers, in fact I admire a good number of them and count them as friends, but, if I were to write a paper on some aspect of engineering I suspect that Sweatman would be among the first to criticize it. Martin, this is my field and I disagree with your conclusions.

And, you don’t have to take my word for it. Andre Costopoulos, Chair of the Arts and Anthropology Department of the University of Alberta (and someone with actual credentials in the field) wrote an excellent review of Sweatman’s paper in 2024 that analyzed and discussed its errors.

Boar and birds carved on a pillar at Gobekli Tepe. Internet image, public domain.

Sweatman claims that “earlier work provided an astronomical interpretation for some of Göbekli Tepe’s symbolism. Specifically, animal symbols on the broad sides of Göbekli Tepe’s pillars were interpreted as constellations similar to some of those from ancient Greece. In addition, Pillar 43 from Enclosure D was suggested to use precession of the equinoxes to display a date around 10,950 ± 250 BCE and interpreted as a memorial to the Younger Dryas impact event.” (Sweatman 2024:2) Now the earliest hard date at Gobekli Tepe is approx. 9530 ± 215 BCE which would mean, remarkably, that its carvings are a record of an event which supposedly happened 1,000 earlier.

He goes on to state that “pillars 2 and 38 at Göbekli Tepe were suggested to describe the path of the radiant of the Taurid meteor stream which is thought to have caused this impact event. Also, Pillar 18, one of the two central pillars from Enclosure D, was suggested to symbolize a comet related to the impact event.  If this interpretation is correct, it has profound consequences. Partly, this is because it implies that astronomical knowledge was far in advance of what is generally assumed for this time.” (Sweatman 2024:3) I can give credit to proposals of long-term memories in cultures, and a certain amount of astronomical knowledge among ancient and pre-literate cultures. But I just cannot quite believe that these people understood that a fragment of a comet had collided with the earth one thousand years earlier (which theory, by the way, is contested).

Pillar 43, Gobekli Tepe, Turkey. Images from Reddit.

"Unisolar calendar" on Pillar 43, "V-symbols," Gobekli Tepe. Photograph by Martin Sweatman.

And as far at the V-symbol’s significance, Sweatman states that “Pillar 43 is split into two sections by rows of V-symbols and small box-symbols. The lower, main portion has a circular disc symbol supported above the wing of a bird of prey. Below this bird symbol is a scorpion symbol. If the circular disc represents the sun, as expected, then the animal symbols probably represent constellations. In particular, the scorpion reminds us of the Greek Scorpius constellation. Its position relative to a circular disc clearly points to an astronomical interpretation.” (Sweatman 2024:9) I find a problem in identifying the various V-symbols as astronomically important, no where I can see in his paper does Sweatman state what the V-symbol actually represents. It seems he is basing his conclusions on an unidentified fact.

And herein lies another problem, a trap fallen into quite frequently by writers on things archeoastronomical. They assume that the names and identities of the constellations we see in the night sky have always been the same. The sad fact is we have no idea what, if any, constellations the inhabitants back then imagined in the night sky, and yet Sweatman bases his conclusions on identifying the constellations that are supposedly portrayed in carved stone.

Pillar 33 from enclosure D, Gobekli Tepe. Photograph by I. Wagner.

“Let us now return to Pillar 33 from Enclosure D. This is the only other pillar at Göbekli Tepe known to exhibit V-symbols. Earlier, it was explained how Pillar 33 can be viewed as a picture of the Taurid meteor stream if the animal symbols on its broad faces correspond to the constellations Pisces (tall birds) and Aquarius (fox), with the snakes representing meteors. Indeed, it was suggested that it shows how the Taurid meteor stream radiant moves from Aquarius to Pisces over the course of a few weeks. However, Pillar 33 also has V-symbols on its inner, narrow face. On the right, 13 V-symbols ascend vertically, while on the left there are 14. As for Pillar 43, these are expected to represent the counting of days. In this case, these symbols might count the duration of the meteor shower from the direction of each constellation as the radiant point moves over the course of nearly one lunar month; 13 days from the direction of Aquarius (the fox) and 14 days from the direction of Pisces (the tall bird). Thus, interpretation of the V-symbols as representing individual days is consistent across Göbekli Tepe and supports the earlier interpretation of Pillar 33.” (Sweatman 2024:37-8) Some carved animals and V-symbols represent a meteor stream, based on what? Give me a break.

And now to Costopoulos’ review of Sweatman’s article. Andre Costopoulos, Chair of the Arts and Anthropology Department of the University of Alberta (and someone with actual credentials in the field) wrote an excellent review of Sweatman’s paper in 2024 that analyzed and discussed its errors.

Fox carved on a pillar at Gobekli Tepe. Internet image, public domain.

We first need to establish the credentials of the source. “Despite being published in a peer reviewed journal, the study is what I would call scaffolded speculation. It consists of a collection of completely untestable and largely unrelated hypotheses, piled on top of one another, to reach an exceedingly unlikely conclusion.” (Costopoulos 2024:1) It makes one wonder exactly whose peers reviewed Sweatman’s paper? I doubt that they were archaeologists or art historians.

The whole Sweatman premise is basically a house of cards. “This is apparent in the structure of the article itself, in which the phrase “If this interpretation is correct”, or a close variation of it, occurs no fewer than five times at critical points in the argumentation, with no attempt at finding out whether those proposed interpretations are actually correct. And this ignores all the previous speculations published by the author, and which are also called on for key support of the argument.” (Costopoulos 2024:1) Too often we see this in articles supposing to explain meaning in rock art. On one page a “this may mean” becomes assumed as a proven fact on subsequent pages, Costopoulos’ “scaffolded speculation.”

Constellation? at Gobekli Tepe. Internet images, public domain.

And Costopolis gets to the crux of his argument. “Their entire interpretation rests on the associations they propose between the constellations and the animal carvings. In order to accept every other argument that follows, including this recent 2024 paper, one has to accept those identifications. As far as I can tell, Sweatman and Tsikritsis make no attempt to actually test the validity of their associations. They just visually match constellation stick figures with stone carvings on the pillar. Frankly, I think I could do just as well finding matches for the constellations on a page of a Beatrix Potter book.” (Costopoulos 2024:3) This goes back to my point about the supposed identification of stellar constellations in the night sky all those millennia ago. We just cannot know this.

More constellations? at Gobekli Tepe. Internet images, public domain.

The main premise of Sweatmans’ paper is somewhat confusing. Half of it discussed the supposed Gobekli Tepe calendrical system based on identifying animals as constellations, and the other half tries to present it as proof of the supposed Younger Dryas comet impact, which is not universally accepted as scientific fact. “The other “established fact” in this system of hypotheses is that there was a Younger Dryas comet impact at all. This is far from certain, and given the current state of scholarship on the question, while it is not completely out of the question, I would say it is exceedingly unlikely. In other words, the scaffolded speculations about the Göbekli Tepe animal carvings are used to support the scaffolded speculations about the YDI. And all of it rests on claimed associations between stick figures and some really stunning and rich animal carvings at an archaeological site in Turkey.” (Costopoulos 2024:4) The stick figures referenced here are drawings of portions of stellar constellations and asterisms that Sweatman identified with the carved animals.

Enough beating on poor Martin Sweatman. I believe he is totally convinced of the truth of his speculations and excited about the new contributions he is making to our knowledge, but it is just this excitement that can lead us astray. We forget to apply critical analysis to our own suppositions. Gobekli Tepe is certainly a fascinating subject, we just need to be careful and self-analytical when we try to understand it.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

PRIMARY REFERENCES:

Costopoulos, Andre, 2024, The Gobekli Tepe calendar and the Younger Dryas Impact: another major media fail, 16 August 2024, ArcheoThoughts blog, https://archeothoughts.wordpress.com. Accessed online 17 October 2024.

Sweatman, Martin B., 2024, Representations of calendars and time at Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe support an astronomical interpretation of their symbolism, Time and Mind, 24 July 2024, DOI:10.1080/1751696X.2024.2373876. Accessed online 6 August 2024.

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

Sweatman, M. B., and D. Tsikritsis, 2017, “Decoding Göbekli Tepe with Archaeoastronomy: What Does the Fox Say?” Mediterranean Archaeometry and Archaeology 17 (1): 233–250.

 

COULD THE CAVE ARTISTS ACTUALLY SEE THEIR COLORS? – CONTINUED, PART 2:

 This one is just for fun, perhaps more for philosophers, please don’t take it too seriously – I do not.

Cave painting of auroch, Lascaux, France. Internet image, public domain.

Then the question became whether the lack of blue was actually based on a physical difference, or was perhaps a cultural or linguistic question.

“Anthropologists took up the challenge next. They were curious about how color was perceived by traditional cultures with limited or no contact to outsiders. In 1898, anthropologist and psychiatrist W.H. R. Rivers went to the Torres Straits Islands, located between New Guinea and Australia, where he investigated the islanders’ color perception. Rivers was astonished to hear the elders describe the sky as black, and a child describe the sky as being dark like dirty water. Rivers and other anthropologists concluded that early humans and members of isolated cultures were not color blind. They saw the same colors we see but linguistically don’t distinguish beyond hues of white, black, or red. This might be a simple enough explanation for Homer’s wine-dark sea, but it still raises the question: did ancient peoples perceive the color ‘blue’?” (Hall 2018) Remember, it is difficult to cognitively contemplate a phenomenon that you do not have a name or label for.

“Before the color blue became a common concept, perhaps humans saw it but simply didn’t recognize it as such. Even more fascinating—or perhaps disturbing—is the realization that the way we perceive the world around us may be something of an illusion, a trick played on us not by some external force but by our own minds, shadows cast against the back of Plato’s allegorical cave. We are oblivious to whatever realities exist outside of our perception. While we modern humans can differentiate between 1 million colors today, our perception is still largely limited to eleven color categories (in the English language: white, black, gray, red, yellow, green, blue, brown, pink, orange, purple). More humbling is the fact that we humans get by with just three types of photoreceptor cone cells (corresponding roughly to red, green, and blue sensitive detectors). Somewhere, silently scuttling beneath Homer’s wine-dark sea, the modest mantis shrimp boasts 16 different types of photoreceptor cone cells, viewing the world through a kaleidoscopic vision of unknowable colors, the likes of which we can only dream.” (Hall 2018) Once again, I enjoy Hall’s slightly sardonic comparison of our human color vision to that of the mantis shrimp.

In  2018, Fiona MacDonald reported on a field trial conducted in 2006 by Jules Davidoff, among the Himba people of Namibia. “But just because there was no word for blue, does that mean our ancestors couldn’t see it? There have been various studies conducted to try to work this out, but one of the most compelling was published in 2006 by Jules Davidoff, a psychologist from Goldsmiths University of London. Davidoff and his team worked with the Himba tribe from Namibia. In their language, there is no word for blue and no real distinction between green and blue. To test whether that meant they couldn’t actually see blue, he showed members of the tribe a circle with 11 green squares and one obviously blue square. But the Himba tribe struggled to tell Davidoff which of the squares was a different color to the others. Those who did hazard a guess at which square was different took a long time the get the right answer, and there were a lot of mistakes. But, interestingly, the Himba have lots more words for green than we do.” (MacDonald 2018) They could see the one square as different, but lacking the mental concept of a color ‘blue’ they had trouble seeing it as different enough to point out. This tends to confirm the statement that we cannot fully comprehend something until we have a name (or label) for it.

 

Hachure on a Mimbres bowl. Internet image, public domain.

MacDonald also reported on a “study by MIT scientists in 2007 that showed that native Russian speakers, who don’t have one single word for blue, but instead have a word for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (sinly), can discriminate between light and dark shades of blue much faster than English speakers.” (MacDonald 2018)

In 2022 Nikola Jones explained a reasonable hypothesis for the development of color terms throughout the history of a culture. “There are several big datasets out there looking at color categorization across cultures. And the consensus is that there are some commonalities. This implies that there might be some biological constraints on the way people learn to categorize color. But not every culture has the same number of categories. So, there’s also this suggestion that color categories are cultural, and cultures experience a kind of evolution in color terms. A language might initially make only two or three distinctions between colors, and then those categories build up in complexity over time.” (Jones 2022)

Hachure on a Mimbres bowl. Pinterest.

I have already written about the use of hachure on ceramics by the Ancestral Puebloans in the American southwest, and the theory that it represented the color blue to them (see my column of 7 June 2025). The origin of the idea that hachure, closely spaced, parallel thin lines, used to fill a space might be intended to symbolize the color blue was credited to J. J. Brody by Stephen Plog (2003). “One of the common design characteristics on black-on-white pottery from the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the northern American Southwest is the use of thin, parallel lines (hachure) to fill the interior of bands, triangles, This essay explores a proposal offered by Jerry Brody that hachure was a symbol for the color blue-is examined by exploring colors and color patterns used to decorate nonceramic material from the of northwestern New Mexico. His proposal is supported and the implications of this conclusion for future studies of this nature are discussed.” (Plog 2003:1) This, however, was not a suggestion that Ancestral Puebloans could not see the color blue, they had a name for the color, comprehended it, and designated it as the color of the direction West in many of these cultures. The assumption is, rather, that good blue pigments are much rarer than blacks or reds, especially blues that would stand up to the firing of a piece of pottery. There are, however, some remarkable examples of blue pictographs in the American west although considerably fewer than most other pigments. I should also point out that most indigenous peoples lend spiritual significance to various colors.

Blue painted figures, Carrot Man site in western Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 2005.

I also questioned whether or not hachure on rock art might have also symbolized blue, even if painted on with a different pigment. Of course, the rock art we study does actually, if rarely, have blue pigments based on natural clays and other materials.

Blue painted figures, Carrot Man site in western Colorado. Photograph Peter Faris, 2005.

Given all of this, the basic question remains ‘did the ancient painters of cave art such as can be found in Lascaux and Chauvet caves see the same range of colors as we do?” There is certainly very little blue found in Paleolithic cave painting, but I take that as a lack of convenient sources of blue pigment at that time, not a lack of visual acuity in color determination. Most of the readily available sources of blue for them would have been in plants in the indigo family which, if used in painting cave walls, might be fugitive, leaving us no evidence of blue in Europe’s painted caves.

I hope you have found this as interesting as I.

 

 

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

 

REFERENCES:

 

Hall, Christopher, 2018, Blue is the Rarest Color: Language and Visual Perception, 30 August 2018, Burnaway digital magazine online, https://burnaway.org/magazine/blue-language-visual-perception. Accessed online 19 February 2025.

 

Jones, Nicola, 2022, Color is in the eye, and brain, of the beholder, 27 October 2022, Knowable Magazine online. Accessed online 8 April 2025.

 

Macdonald, Fiona, 2018, There’s Evidence Humans Didn’t Actually See Blue Until Modern Times, 7 April 2025, https://www.sciencealert.com. Accessed online 19 February 2025.

 

Plog, Stephen, 2003, Exploring the Ubiquitous Through the Unusual: Color Symbolism in Pueblo Black on White Pottery, October 2003, American Antiquity, Volume 68 (4), pp. 665-695. Accessed online at JSTOR, 7 March 2025.

 

 

SECONDARY REFERENCE:

 

Brody, J. J., 1991, Anasazi and Pueblo Painting, A School of American Research Book, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

COULD THE CAVE ARTISTS ACTUALLY SEE THEIR COLORS? – PART 1:

Color wheel. Internet image, public domain.

What follows is my take on a philosophical question – “did ancient people see colors the same way we do?” This one is just for fun, please don’t take it too seriously – I do not.

 

I have recently run across a very strange line of inquiry (or speculation anyway) that investigates whether or not ancient people could see/discriminate/comprehend all of the colors that we see. This became a fascinating mental exercise for me. Such a question would perhaps be pertinent to us as to whether or not the Paleolithic cave-artists saw the same colors we see, and did that reflect in their paintings? Before beginning I have to confess that in extensive searches of cave paintings in Europe, both on the internet and in printed books, I have failed to find an example painted in blue.

Cave painting of auroch, Lascaux, France. Internet image, public domain.

One strong possibility is that while they certainly saw the colors, meaning that their eyes picked up on all the same wavelengths of light that we do, they may not have comprehended what they were seeing. Based upon the old truism that you cannot actually comprehend something that you do not have a name for, until the name for the color blue was invented (in whatever language they spoke) they just were not as aware of it as they would have been shades of red. Remember, there seems to have been a historic fascination with red ocher.

Cave painting of auroch and horses, Lascaux, France. Internet image, public domain.

One of the first examples scholars noticed was in the writings of the Greek poet Homer. Christopher Hall (2018) has studied this subject extensively and explains that “Then Achilles, in tears, moved far away from his companions, and sat down on the shore, and gazed out over the wine-dark sea. (Iliad, 1. 351-353, trans. Stephen Mitchell) What color is the sea? Perhaps a silver-pewter at dawn, or a deep blue, or a warm green-blue, depending on the particular day, depth, and geographic location —but have you ever described the sea as being the color of claret? One of the characteristics of Homer’s writing is his use of epithets:  rosy-fingered dawn, swift-footed Achilles. Arguably the most famous of these is his oinops pontos, his wine-dark sea; it appears over a dozen times in the Iliad and the Odyssey, companion books chronicling the Greek siege of Troy, the Trojan War, and then the difficult journey undertaken by Odysseus after the war as he attempts to find his way home back to Ithaca. Wine-dark sea has been the subject of much speculation over the past couple hundred years. Shouldn’t the sea be blue? Strangely, nowhere in Homer’s epic poetry is the color blue ever mentioned. Water, water everywhere, but not a hint of blue.” (Hall 2018) I love the humor in Hall’s use of Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (way back when I read this in High School English it was spelled “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner). He is pointing out the omission of any reference to the color blue, and some of Homer’s substitute phrases for it.

 

To begin with I need to add another disclaimer – an online search for “ancient Greek blue pigments” will yield many sites that do claim that the ancient Greeks had a word for blue. But again I have to confess that in extensive searches of images of Greek art, both on the internet and in printed books, I have failed to find an example painted in blue.

Hall continues “One of the first people to seriously study Homer’s use of color was the 19th-century classics scholar and British Prime Minister William Gladstone. In 1858, Gladstone published a seminal 1,700-page study of Homer’s epic poetry, which included a 30-page statistical analysis of Homer’s use of color. Gladstone notes that, compared to modern writers, Homer rarely mentions color, and what is mentioned is mostly limited to shades of black and white, with red, yellow, and green making only occasional appearances. Black is mentioned almost 200 times, white about 100. Red is mentioned fewer than 15 times, and yellow and green fewer than 10. Moreover, Homer’s descriptions of color can be, at times, completely bizarre: skies the color of bronze, stars are an iron or copper hue, sheep wool and ox skin appear purple, horses and lions are red, and honey glows green. Most conspicuous, however, Gladstone noted the complete absence of the color blue. Nothing is ever described as ‘blue.” (Hall 2018) Might it just have been that Homer was color blind? This turned out to be Gladstone’s explanation.

Wall painted Egyptian blue, Tomb of Meruka, Egypt. Internet image, public domain.

But then the question is was it just Homer who was color blind or were all ancient Greeks color blind? “But Homer’s blindness could not be an explanation for the strange use of color in the Iliad and Odyssey. The existing texts record stories from a longstanding oral tradition. Moreover, once Gladstone sifted through Homer’s texts, he also analyzed the descriptions in other ancient Greek texts and found they too had a conspicuous lack of color terms, limited to mostly shades of black and white—and again, a total absence of the color “blue.” The word didn’t even exist. Did the Homeric Greeks have defective color vision? Was there something physically different about their eyes? Indeed, that was Gladstone’s conclusion: “[The] organ of colour and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age.” The ancient Greeks, according to him, were color blind.” (Hall 2018) In other words, it was not just Homer, it apparently was his whole culture.

Egyptian blue pyxis (cylindrical container). Internet image, public domain.

Since then, many other theories have been posited for the lack of the word blue in Homer’s writings. “All of these potential explanations fail to account for one very important thing, however: the absence of the word “blue” in ancient Greek literature. The Greek islands are practically surrounded by the color blue: blue sky, blue sea—and yet the word for “blue” is conspicuously absent. Gladstone was on to something with his statistical compilation of color use in ancient Greek literature, but as it turns out, his study was a bit narrow: the ancient Greeks were not alone in their limited color descriptions, nor in the conspicuous absence of the color “blue.” Expanding upon Gladstone’s research, philosopher and philologist Lazarus Geiger found the same phenomenon in ancient Hebrew literature, Assyrian texts, Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese stories, Hindu Vedic hymns and Indian epics such as the Mahabharata. It is as though the entire ancient world were living in murky world of black and white, basking under heavy, brazen bronze skies, interrupted on rare occasion by flashes of red or yellow. The only ancient culture to have a word for blue was the Egyptians, as they developed the first synthetic pigment, Egyptian blue (the secret of its manufacture was lost in Roman times, but is thought to have been derived from heating together a quartz sand, a copper compound, calcium carbonate, and a small amount of alkali).” (Hall 2018) This resulted in a coarse blue sandy, partially vitrified product (somewhat similar to faience blue glaze) that was then ground fine enough to be used as the pigment. Egyptian blue was possibly the first artificially produced pigment.

Egyptian blue, Nebamun hunting. wall painting from the tomb-chapel of Nebamun, Thebes, New Kingdom, 1350 BC. Image credit Werner Forman Archive  Bridgeman Images.

“In the annals of history, ancient Egyptian society emerges as the trailblazer in embracing a distinct term for the color blue, owing to its pioneering development of blue dyes. This innovation found its vibrant expression in the renowned hue known as Egyptian blue. This stunning color featured in artworks such as the tombs of Mereruka  from the Old Kingdom (2600 to 2100 BC).” (Cowie 2024)

 

Then the question became whether the lack of blue was actually based on a physical difference, or was perhaps a cultural or linguistic question.

 

NOTE 1: The second part of this column will be posted next week.

NOTE 2: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

 

REFERENCES:

 

Cowie, Ashley, 2024, Hidden Hue: Why Ancient Civilizations Failed to See the Color Blue? 18 June 2024, Ancient Origins, https://www.ancientorginsunleashed.com. Accessed online 19 February 2025.

 

Hall, Christopher, 2018, Blue is the Rarest Color: Language and Visual Perception, 30 August 2018, Burnaway digital magazine online, https://burnaway.org/magazine/blue-language-visual-perception. Accessed online 19 February 2025.