Related: The Wine-Dark Sea: Color and Perception in the Ancient World by Erin Hoffman [1]. Extract:
"We may never know for sure, but one peculiar fact casts the mystery in an interesting light: there is no word for “blue” in ancient Greek. Homer’s descriptions of color in The Iliad and The Odyssey, taken literally, paint an almost psychedelic landscape: in addition to the sea, sheep were also the color of wine; honey was green, as were the fear-filled faces of men; and the sky is often described as bronze."
Edit: Interestingly, Russian appears not to have a single word for blue [1]. Instead, light blue and dark blue are thought of as separate colours.
Kind of like the fuzzy areas in between what we call red, dark red, light red, bright red, dull red, and pink (and bright pink and light pink and dark pink and dull pink).
"We may never know for sure, but one peculiar fact casts the mystery in an interesting light: there is no word for “blue” in ancient Greek. Homer’s descriptions of color in The Iliad and The Odyssey, taken literally, paint an almost psychedelic landscape: in addition to the sea, sheep were also the color of wine; honey was green, as were the fear-filled faces of men; and the sky is often described as bronze."
Edit: Interestingly, Russian appears not to have a single word for blue [1]. Instead, light blue and dark blue are thought of as separate colours.
[1] http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/hoffman_01_13/
[2] http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full