Why is the sky blue?
It's one of the most common questions asked by both kids and adults, unless you're from ancient Greece.
I know, I know, you'd think the country that is now ubiquitously known for beautiful blue rooftops, crystal blue waters, and a blue flag would have a longer history with the color.
But if you were to read Homer, uh, not that one, the famous ancient Greek writer from the 8th century B. C. , you'd notice that the word blue isn't mentioned once.
Through thousands of pages of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," black is mentioned 170 times, white 100, red 13 times, yellow and green each around 10, but blue never appears.
What's weirder is that Homer describes things that we would normally call blue, like the ocean, as wine-dark.
He even calls honey green and sheep violet.
For a while, some suggested that maybe the ancient Greeks just saw colors different than we do, or maybe they were all color blind.
But we now know that color vision developed around 30 million years ago so that's not it.
It gets even crazier.
