| Ancient Pigments Aug 12th 2011, 10:00 Ancient pigments were created by all human cultures on earth at least since the early modern humans used ochre to stain themselves, to paint walls and objects, some 70,000 years ago in South Africa. The investigations of pigments have led to some interesting conclusions about how pigments were manufactured and what roles they played in prehistoric and historic societies. Ochre, a natural pigment which comes in shades of yellow, red, orange and brown, is the first pigment used by humans, in the Middle Stone Age of Africa, at least 70.000 years ago. Ochre, also called hematite, is found all over the world, and has been used by nearly every prehistoric culture, whether as paint on cave and building walls, staining of pottery or other types of artifacts or part of a burial ritual or body paints. A color somewhere between blue-violet and red-purple, royal purple was a dye made from a species of whelk, used by the royalty of Europe for their clothing and and other purposes. It was probably first invented at Tyre during the Imperial Roman period of the 1st century AD. 
China Photos / Getty Images Chinese Purple, also called Han Purple, was a manufactured purple pigment invented in China about 1200 BC, during the Western Zhou Dynasty. Some archaeologists believe that the Zhou dynasty artist who invented the color was trying to imitate a rare of jade. Chinese Purple is sometimes called Han Purple, because it was used in painting the terracotta soldiers of the Qin emperor during the first century BC. Maya Blue is a bright blue pigment used by the Maya civilization to decorate pottery and wall mural paintings beginning about AD 500. It was also very important in some Maya ritual contexts. Egyptian blue is an ancient pigment manufactured by the Bronze Age Egyptians and Mesopotamia and adopted by Imperial Rome. First used circa 2600 BC, Egyptian blue decorated many art objects, pottery vessels and walls.   | |
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