“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“Mary was given a blue robe,” he said, “a dark, wonderful and expensive blue befitting the queen of heaven.”
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.
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.
So, too, should we recall in today’s bitter blue-red, donkey-pachyderm dialectic that just a few years ago, red stood for Marx.

無論天空、水面的無瑕之美曾給史前藝術家們帶來多少靈感，他們也無法將藍色再現於畫布。 蘇黎世大學(University of Zurich)的海因茨·貝爾克(Heinz Berke)指出，知名的拉斯科(Lascaux)洞窟及其附近洞窟內2萬年前的壁畫看不到任何藍色。

貝爾克博士說，“早期人類接觸不到藍色顏料，因為這不是一種所謂的土地色。你無法從泥土中提取。”他說，只有人類開始礦產開發後，才開始提取藍色顏料。貝爾克博士是化學家，他對藍色的歷史進行了研究。
古代世界第一個着色穩定的藍顏料取自於青金石。這是一種產自阿富汗的次等寶石，大約於6000年開始開採。埃及人給予這種藍寶石無上的地位。他們用青金石加金子來裝飾法老的墓穴，女王克麗奧佩特拉(Cleopatra)用它的粉末做眼影。

但這種礦物質極其稀有，於是埃及人只能通過化學手段提取新的藍色。他們將石灰石、沙子、銅加熱形成化合物鈣銅硅酸鹽(calcium copper silicate)，他們發明了飽滿的呈王室綠松石色澤的顏料——埃及藍。隨後，美索不達米亞人、波斯人、希臘人和羅馬人分別採納了這個配方的不同版本， 他們建了工廠專門製作藍色。

在古代中國，化學家們將銅與重金屬鋇、鉛或水銀化合，創造出一種藍色。但可惜的是，這些同樣的重金屬也用來煉製當時盛行的，但實則有毒的長生不老葯。貝爾克博士說，“據說40%的中國皇帝都重金屬中毒。”

然後，美洲土著發明了一種鮮艷的、色澤持久的顏料叫瑪雅藍。這是古文明創造的三種偉大藍色的第三種。科學家們近來指出，瑪雅藍可能混合了槐藍屬植物提取物，粘土礦物坡縷石以及瑪雅人奉為聖香的柯巴脂。

不論其來源，在工業時期以前，藍顏料始終稀少、昂貴。這也許能說明為什麼藍色始終與皇室和神關聯，而且藍色至今為人們所喜愛。卡羅來納海岸大學 (Coastal Carolina University)的視覺藝術教授史蒂文·布萊謝爾(Steven Bleicher)發現，公元431年，當天主教會決定以不同的顏色代表各聖徒，藍色的地位進一步鞏固。

他說，“馬利亞穿上了藍色的袍子，這種深沉、美麗、奢華的藍色正符合聖母的形象。”
布萊謝爾博士說，後來馬利亞藍成了海軍藍，一種代表信任、權威的顏色，也成了銀行家和警察的顏色。此時，藍色和權威已經緊緊聯繫起來。聯合國在設計維和士兵制服的時候有意避開始用這種顏色，而選擇了更為柔和的知更鳥蛋殼藍。
馬里蘭大學(University of Maryland)研究服裝史的喬·B·保萊蒂(Jo B. Paoletti)說，至於用顏色來標識性別——藍色代表男孩，粉色代表女孩，也是在戰後嬰兒潮時才開始使用。保萊蒂寫了《粉和藍：在美國辨別男孩、女 孩》(Pink and Blue: Telling the Boys From the Girls in America)。即使在那時，美國南部的一些地區仍沒有採用嚴格的兒童服飾規則。保萊蒂博士說，“我發現直到上世紀70年代末，仍有男孩穿粉色服裝。”
那麼，我們是不是應該忘記當下的非藍即紅，非驢即象的邏輯。要知道，不久以前，紅色代表馬克思主義。