 Okay everyone, today's episode is going to get a little weird, and I hope you stick with me on this one because this is something that has fascinated me for a while and I'll think you'll get a kick out of it too. Today's topic is both historically and psychologically bizarre, and in just a few minutes, this episode's title should make a lot more sense. Today I'm going to show you how karate can be visible, just like the color blue. So there's been a study that's been going around for a few years and that revolves around the idea that humans couldn't see the color blue until modern times. Now this is a really bizarre claim, so this brings up two main questions. The first is, is this even true? The second question is, which I'm sure many of you are asking, is what the hell does this have to do with the martial arts? Let's answer both of these. I will be referring to a website, Business Insider, that featured a 2015 article written by Kevin Lauria referencing the podcast by Radiolab called Colors. So if you want more information on this topic after the episode, you can find it down in the description down below. But the interesting observation is that there seems to be evidence that ancient civilizations didn't see, or at least perceive, the color blue. It seems that until recent history, any word or reference to the color blue didn't exist in literature or any written record, leading to the theory that if we don't name or identify something, we don't see it. How is this observed? Well, this study goes back to 1858 when William Gladstone, a scholar and eventual Prime Minister of Britain, noticed that there was absolutely no reference to the color blue in Homer's The Odyssey, written sometime between 725 to 675 BCE. Despite detailed descriptions of the world, Homer did not have a single usage of the word blue. The ocean was described as being wine face or wine dark, which is a rather strange way to describe the blue ocean. Upon further study, he noticed a lot of strange color references. Iron and sheep were described as violet and honey is referenced as green. So, was this an issue with color perception, or was it simply a creative choice by Homer? To answer this, scholars have gone through ancient Icelandic, Greek, and Chinese stories and religious texts, including the Koran and the Hebrew version of the Bible. Not one single reference to the word blue exists in any of these texts, despite descriptions of heaven in the sky. Philologists, or someone who studies ancient texts, Lazarus Geiger, noticed a rather interesting pattern as he took part in a study. There seems to have been a certain pattern of color usage across history in different civilizations. Every civilization had descriptions for light and dark or black and white, with eventual references to the colors for blood and wine, and in later came descriptions for the colors yellow and green. These colors emerged mostly in the same order across multiple cultures, leaving one to wonder if ancient people were colorblind, and in all cases, the color blue was the last color to emerge, and that wasn't until far later. So what exactly is happening here? Well, one of the theories is that because when it comes to our environment, blue is much less common in other colors, so perhaps if we didn't observe it directly or designated a name for it, that we simply couldn't see it. So okay, yes. The idea that we couldn't see the color blue simply because we didn't have a name for it does seem pretty hard to believe, and there are a lot of people who call BS and poke holes in this idea. For one, blue is pretty prevalent. There are animals, fish, and plants, and while not as numerous as other colors, they certainly were blue. Then there is the ocean and the sky, but then again, were they really blue? I mean, we perceive them as blue, but that's because of the way light reflects and refracts. The ocean isn't really blue, water is clear. The same thing with our atmosphere, air is clear, and at other times, our sky can be red, orange, and purple too, so it's not a matter of the same pigment reflection on, say, a flower's petals. Then we have the ancient Egyptians who predate many of the study texts, and they were the exception to the rule. They utilized blue and were believed to be the only civilization at the time known to be able to produce blue dyes. The color existed, it's not like it was missing from the color spectrum and just one day popped into existence, so what's really going on? Scholars believe it may be an issue of perception, so it's not so much that older civilizations didn't see the color blue, they just simply didn't perceive it as its own color. Many references and texts and cultures seem to consider blue as a shade of another color, most often the color green. Now, this makes a lot more sense if we see colors as shades, then we don't always give them their own identity, and we won't necessarily see them as something different. You know, violet and purple were often considered the same color, and even tan was just considered a shade of brown until it got its own designation. And this categorization is something that evolves over time. If blue was considered simply a shade of another color, it makes sense why it may not have been referred to specifically, especially in the days when colors were described in rudimentary fashion at best. In an interesting experiment, one researcher tried a little test. When he was raising his young daughter, he made considerable effort not to describe the color of the sky to her, and in after a few years, he asked her one day what color the sky was. Interestingly, her first answer was that the sky didn't have a color. Then she said white. After a while, she eventually came up with blue. So while not definitive, this does suggest that perception can alter the observation. If you liked today's video, then please be sure to tap on that subscribe button down below, and thankfully, it's currently an easy to see red and not blue. Also, stick around to the end, and I'll show you an experiment that they tried with the theory of blue being perceived as a shade of green and a reverse test. One that I bet very few of you will pass. But let's first talk about how this relates to the martial arts. Since we're talking about a concept of perception, we see a lot of debate in the world of martial arts over which art is better, stronger, or works in competition or not. Too many people see the martial arts in black and white, while there are lots of shades of gray. It isn't until we can stop and open our minds and saturate ourselves in an art that we can start to see its color. If it's possible that our brains didn't register a color because we didn't perceive it in a certain way, then I believe the same is true of the martial arts. I look back at a lot of the comments people left over the years. I have heard Kemple Sparring referred to as lazy kickboxing. I have heard people say that karate is just boxing with kicks, and in the rift between Judo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, I have heard people basically say that BJJ stands for basically just Judo. I don't agree with any of these statements above, but it does show the power of perception. If you're going to look at an art as simply a shade or subset of something else, then you may be missing out on a lot of its color. A lot of contemporary athletes out there say that the only fighting style that works is MMA. But what is MMA, but a box of crayons mixed with different colors. Typically you see boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, BJJ, and certain types of karate and Kung Fu in training, but you can see that these are the black and white versions of the art. The rudimentary and streamlined, but if you look at Muay Thai as more than just a collection of blocks, knees, and kicks as you see in the ring, and actually saturate yourself in traditional training, you'll see it's rather different. There is a whole culture, ceremony, and lifestyle that comes with it. It's more than just a shade of MMA gym fighting. Okay, how about this one? If karate or taekwondo are so good, why don't we see them in MMA? Well, the better question is why don't you see them? If you don't know the training or intimate details of an art, then it might just look like a type of kickboxing. But if you educate yourself within their system, you'll begin to recognize specific techniques and strategies that those without the training won't perceive. So martial arts, I think, reflects the same pattern of observation as they did with the ancient texts. We start to learn a style, and we see the black and white first, the technical and fundamental details. Over time we understand more of the art and more of the color starts to emerge. First it's the basic colors, and over time we start to recognize different shades. Every style out there has something easy to overlook. There's a connective tissue or a color that you won't be able to see until you learn how to see it. Boxing is far more than just punching. You can practice every single strike forever and never be good at it until you discover how timing, footwork, and strategy work together. BJJ isn't just rolling around. To be good at it, you have to learn how to not only perform the techniques, but how to read your opponent's body. Each move, and twitch, and action will elicit a different reaction from you, but you have to train in it long enough to see that. Every art has something easy to overlook. It could be academic information, timing, bunkai, practical application, modification, just something that you won't see until you learn how to see it as its own identity. So you keep working hard until you can see the color blue. So here was one test that they tried that was really interesting. Researcher Jules Davidoff met with the Himba tribe in Namibia, South Africa. This tribe was chosen because their language does not contain any terminology for the color blue or the distinction between blue and green for that matter, though they have far more words for green than we do in English. They were shown a circle of blocks on the screen, all various shades of green, and one block that was obviously blue. Well, obvious to most of us. They were not able to discern which of those blocks were different. They did not see the blue stand out like we would. It was simply perceived as another shade of green to them. But then they presented a reverse test, in which we are presented with a circle of green blocks. All of them are exactly the same, except one of them is a slightly different shade. I'm willing to bet that most of us can't see it. Can you pick out the one that's different, a different shade of green than the others? We'll give you a couple of seconds. Pause if you need to. While members of the Himba tribe could not pick out the blue, they immediately could see that this was not the same green as the others. Now, I could stare at this all day long and still not see it. This whole study, blue, my mind, and it has altered the way I look at the martial arts. It really highlights the importance and impact of perception and how it's so easy to miss something if we don't know what's there. So I think it's important to keep an open mind about different martial arts styles. Can you look at your own art and go deeper and find layers and meanings, or anything that has significance that you may have missed otherwise? Can you find the blue in your art? I'm really curious to know what you guys think of this one, and if you're interested in learning more about the study, we have a link down in the description below. If you want to see a more practical application of this concept, then check out our episode, Shodokan MMA, and we show you specific karate techniques that Leona Machida uses in the cage that only a karate guy would recognize. Thanks for watching.