Random thought of the day

[curgoth]

If we assume that the commonly accpeted idea about early man is correct, that men were hunters and women gatherers, I wonder how much of that was simply because men are much more likely to be colour-blind, and therefore have a harder time differentiating bewteen poisonous and non-poisonous gathered food.

Comments

[kalivor.livejournal.com]

I would think that it was because the women would need to breast feed the baby, and babies have a higher survival rate when brought gathering, as opposed to hunting ...

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

*Laughing*

[curgoth]

This came from thinking about Settlers of Catan online, which has problems for colour-blind people, since most of the board is just shades of red, green and brown.

There is a reason that people seldom ask me "what are you thinking about?" again after I give them an honest answer...

[curgoth]

I always forget about the breats feeding...

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

Oh, no... that wasn't derisive laughter - that was survival of the species laughter...

It's pretty much a miracle we've made it this far.

And I like hearing about the weird stuff in other people's heads. It's a good way to stretch my brain a little.

[djinnthespazz.livejournal.com]

And the designers of the on-line game should throw a background texture behind the colors, so that the distinction is clear even if you don't catch the colors. That's a simple fix, without changing the game board much at all for those who are accustomed to it's current look.

[curgoth]

Yeah, the developers said there were working on it, though I didn't check the date on that update on their page. I wish they would, though, because even with my pretty good (i.e., non-colour blind) colour vision, I find it kind of hard to tell the "red" they have for clay from the "brown" they have for forests.

[alison-in-oh.livejournal.com]

The only place color might come in to play is berries, right? Red is often bad, white is almost always bad, blues and purples tend to be OK.

Well, my color-blind husband can see blue against green like nobody's business. We'll be out berry picking and he's like, there's a huge patch of blueberries! I can't even see them till I'm closer.

Conversely, he doesn't see and walks right by patches of brilliant red lowbush cranberries.

Is this, perhaps, a counterexample for your theory? :D

(In Jean Auel's books, the strict division of labor was part of the downfall of early man leading to the rise of modern man...)

[curgoth]

See, I was thinking in terms of all kinds of good red berries, mainly, as well as some foods that are good to eat when red, but not when green.