蓝色曾经是一种尊贵的颜色

蓝色曾经是一种尊贵的颜色

However inspired they may have been by the immaculate beauty of the sky and water they saw every day, prehistoric artists had no way to render the color blue with paint. As Heinz Berke of the University of Zurich has pointed out, the famous cave paintings at Lascaux and surrounding sites, which date back some 20,000 years, are notably lacking in blue.

无论天空、水面的无瑕之美曾给史前艺术家们带来多少灵感，他们也无法将蓝色再现于画布。苏黎世大学(University of Zurich)的海因茨·贝尔克(Heinz Berke)指出，知名的拉斯科(Lascaux)洞窟及其附近洞窟内2万年前的壁画看不到任何蓝色。

“Early mankind had no access to blue, because blue is not what you call an earth color,” said Dr. Berke, a chemist who has studied the history of blue pigment. “You don’t find it in the soil.” Only with the advent of mining, he said, could sources of blue pigment be extracted.

贝尔克博士说，“早期人类接触不到蓝色颜料，因为这不是一种所谓的土地色。你无法从泥土中提取。”他说，只有人类开始矿产开发后，才开始提取蓝色颜料。贝尔克博士是化学家，他对蓝色的历史进行了研究。

The first stable blue colorant used in the ancient world came from lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone mined in Afghanistan beginning about 6,000 years ago. The Egyptians prized all things lapis, combining it with gold to adorn the tombs of the pharaohs, or powdering it into eye shadow for Cleopatra.

古代世界第一个着色稳定的蓝颜料取自于青金石。这是一种产自阿富汗的次等宝石，大约于6000年开始开采。埃及人给予这种蓝宝石无上的地位。他们用青金石加金子来装饰法老的墓穴，女王克丽奥佩特拉(Cleopatra)用它的粉末做眼影。

But the scarcity of the mineral drove the Egyptians to seek new blues through chemistry. By heating together limestone, sand and copper into the chemical compound calcium copper silicate, they invented the richly saturated royal-turquoise pigment called Egyptian blue. Variants of the recipe were taken up by the Mesopotamians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans, who built factories devoted to blue’s production.

但这种矿物质极其稀有，于是埃及人只能通过化学手段提取新的蓝色。他们将石灰石、沙子、铜加热形成化合物钙铜硅酸盐(calcium copper silicate)，他们发明了饱满的呈王室绿松石色泽的颜料——埃及蓝。随后，美索不达米亚人、波斯人、希腊人和罗马人分别采纳了这个配方的不同版本，他们建了工厂专门制作蓝色。

In ancient China, chemists created blue pigments by blending copper with heavy elements like barium, lead and mercury. Unfortunately, those same heavy elements were often brewed into popular — and ultimately toxic — elixirs. “It’s said that 40 percent of the Chinese emperors suffered from heavy-element poisoning,” Dr. Berke said.

在古代中国，化学家们将铜与重金属钡、铅或水银化合，创造出一种蓝色。但可惜的是，这些同样的重金属也用来炼制当时盛行的，但实则有毒的长生不老药。贝尔克博士说，“据说40%的中国皇帝都重金属中毒。”

The Mesoamericans invented the third of the three great blues of ancient civilization, a vivid and durable pigment called Mayan blue that scientists recently suggested could be a mix of indigo plant extract, a clay mineral called palygorskite, and resin from the Maya’s sacred incense, copal.

然后，美洲土著发明了一种鲜艳的、色泽持久的颜料叫玛雅蓝。这是古文明创造的三种伟大蓝色的第三种。科学家们近来指出，玛雅蓝可能混合了槐蓝属植物提取物，粘土矿物坡缕石以及玛雅人奉为圣香的柯巴脂。

Whatever its origin, the blue pigment remained rare and expensive until the dawn of the industrial age, which probably explains blue’s longstanding association with royalty and divinity, and possibly why it is a widely favored color today. According to Steven Bleicher, a professor of visual arts at Coastal Carolina University, blue got a big endorsement in the year 431, when the Catholic church decided to “color code” the saints.

不论其来源，在工业时期以前，蓝颜料始终稀少、昂贵。这也许能说明为什么蓝色始终与皇室和神关联，而且蓝色至今为人们所喜爱。卡罗来纳海岸大学(Coastal Carolina University)的视觉艺术教授史蒂文·布莱谢尔(Steven Bleicher)发现，公元431年，当天主教会决定以不同的颜色代表各圣徒，蓝色的地位进一步巩固。

“Mary was given a blue robe,” he said, “a dark, wonderful and expensive blue befitting the queen of heaven.”

他说，“马利亚穿上了蓝色的袍子，这种深沉、美丽、奢华的蓝色正符合圣母的形象。”

Over time, Mary blue became navy blue, the color of trustworthiness and authority, of bankers and the police. At this point, navy blue is so tightly linked to the notions of authority, Dr. Bleicher said, that the United Nations specifically avoided the color in designing the uniform of its peacekeeping troops and instead opted for a softer robin’s-egg blue.

布莱谢尔博士说，后来马利亚蓝成了海军蓝，一种代表信任、权威的颜色，也成了银行家和警察的颜色。此时，蓝色和权威已经紧紧联系起来。联合国在设计维和士兵制服的时候有意避开始用这种颜色，而选择了更为柔和的知更鸟蛋壳蓝。

As for the color-coding of the sexes, the idea that blue is for boys and pink means girls didn’t really gain traction in this country until the postwar baby boom, according to Jo B. Paoletti, a historian of dress at of the University of Maryland and the author of the new book “Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America.” Even then, some parts of the South lagged in adopting the strict rules of childhood attire. “I found examples of pink clothing for boys way up through the 1970s,” Dr. Paoletti said.

马里兰大学(University of Maryland)研究服装史的乔·B·保莱蒂(Jo B. Paoletti)说，至于用颜色来标识性别——蓝色代表男孩，粉色代表女孩，也是在战后婴儿潮时才开始使用。保莱蒂写了《粉和蓝：在美国辨别男孩、女孩》(Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America)。即使在那时，美国南部的一些地区仍没有采用严格的儿童服饰规则。保莱蒂博士说，“我发现直到上世纪70年代末，仍有男孩穿粉色服装。”

So, too, should we recall in today’s bitter blue-red, donkey-pachyderm dialectic that just a few years ago, red stood for Marx.

那么，我们是不是应该忘记当下的非蓝即红，非驴即象的逻辑。要知道，不久以前，红色代表马克思主义。