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Your Idea of the Past is WRONG
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2023
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Here is something most likely the majority of those who watch this video will think it's true, but it isn't. Let's debunk it with facts.
Link to the footage used original video for Assassin's Creed Odyssey
• Assassin's Creed Odyss...
#mythbusting #debunking #history
"Why politics wants to invade the history of art is beyond me"
Control.
If they can rewrite your past into a narrative that suits them, they can all the easier control you today.
Currently, I'm playing Assassin's Creed Unity (set in 18th cent. revolutionary France) and it is a nice touch, that developers did depict in the story even this theme of politics controling present through rewriting or censoring past. Which of course during the French revolution was very much a thing. This practice is simply as old as human civilizations itself.
who is "they" exactly? do you have any particular group in mind? absolutely amazing to see a white marble statue pfp in this very thread, proving the very point metatron is failing to argue against.
@@xereeto In context of this tacitus6384's comment "they" refers to "politics". However that statement is generally applicable to anyone.
And what point Metatron is failing to argue against do you mean? I'm not sure what you mean by that.
@@Lukas-Trnka 1. the idea of a nefarious specific group of people trying to inject "their" politics into art, to "rewrite" history and "control" the population, echoes a certain narrative from 1930s germany very closely. that's all i'm saying.
2. metatron dismisses the link between the white statue myth and white supremacy, because he refuses to engage with the actual argument being made - namely that fascists LOVE white marble statues and hold them fairly central to their belief system - and instead attacks a strawman. enter a white statue pfp spouting off nazi-adjacent dogwhistles to illustrate the point.
@@xereeto Who is "they" you ask?
Given from what I've read of your two posts, I'd tell you to look in a mirror to answer your question.
And the white marble statue's are liked because they have a certain gravitas to them. The painted ones might have been works of art at the time, but they look tacky to us today, like a cheap action figure. The polished, white marble statue has gravitas to it and speaks to a romanticised bygone era of heroes and valor.
But sure, nazis, nazis, nazis, white supremacy, something something racism. Go away you boring man.
This will take a minute..
There was a statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni in Philadelphia, PA ,USA created by an Icelandic sculptor in 1920. The statue stood in a park ,highly visible. There is a story that connects it to the Leifur Eriksson statue at Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik. In 2020 this beautiful bronze statue was torn down, decapitated , spray painted with various symbols used by the German Military in WWII and dumped into the river. This was done by people who actually thought Thorfinn Karlsefni- born n 980AD, and the sculptor- Einar Jónsson- born born1874, were both Nazi's and white supremacists-- it actually makes my brain hurt to think about it.
Isn't it amazing how easy it is to get low intellect people riled up to do bad things?
Heart-breaking 😢
I was in Center City when the ... "fun" went down. I'm surprised anyone had time to destroy statues when there were Indian restaurants to loot... for social justice of course. It is well known that curry is contrary to social justice. But this was not a crowd who would pause to spend 20 seconds googling a thing before wrecking it.
#BLM #Antifa
There is nothing more harmful than ignorance
I remember bringing this up with my students when I taught European History at a high school. The thing that struck everyone as most comical is that, because the ancient statues were without paint by the time the Renaissance scholars renewed interest in them, we get the dominant unpainted statue aesthetic that still rules the western world today. We make statues the way we do, for centuries, because of a misunderstanding of art history. I find that hilarious.
When I studied painting all the Renaissance master surviving paints were in dark hues and my art classes always had students working in dark color avoiding the bright colors street artists liked to use. Back then serious artists used blacks and greys.
Then they started to restore those old paintings and it turned out the Italians in 16th Century Rome liked the same bright colors that people do today.
The lesson: don't use the brooding images of the past to judge what seems like fun today. Live your life in the current moment with what ever joy comes your way.
It's also because it looks aesthetically pleasing.
What about the millions of statues in churches that have been painted?
@@pieternoordenbos Perhaps because that comes out of a different line of tradition. In the churches what you have is icons of saints...this grew out of late antiquity and the middle ages, whereas with the Renaissance one sees an attempt to reach back to the classical world...and when that was done, the statues they looked to were bare stone, so that became the fashion for monuments and art, while the churches continued on with their own traditional ways (mostly).
To be honest the statues that are painted rarely look good. It's also just an aesthetic choice.
The misconceptions of dull or uncolored statues and paintings is unfortunately not limited to Greco-Roman statues and buildings.
Vikings wore colorful clothes where some could fit in a modern day circus. The Qin Terra Cotta armies were painted in a variety of different colors - they were not a dull brown. Middle Eastern buildings of ancient Sumeria, Persia, etc were also painted. Even the medieval European castles were often painted, and medieval people loved to wear different colors.
The medieval period was quite colorful. Some of the fashion trends were just crazy colorful. Also people in the Middle Ages weren’t dirty nor did they stink. They believed in the theory of miasma so bad smell was to be avoided.
@@raskolnikov6443it's kinda funny that when movies became "realistic" and gritty they are actually less realistic the the more campy stuff from before. Like 70's movies had all the color and people where not covered in dirt
That somehow makes wonder if they were colorful enough to Fit into a RWBY show?
No, very few people wore bright colors like you think of... they wore colors yes but strong colors were hard to get and the ones that you can get faded quickly or oxidized into not great colors. Yes there were colors in the most lavish of things but most people couldn't afford that. You are just screwing up history in the other way in service of your feelings, you feel that others were dumb and you are jerking the steering wheel the other way. Just because people loved to wear different colors also doesn't mean they had the money to do so.
Shadiversity did a video about a castle he was touring and pointed out places where the stone walls still had traces of paint on them.
I was about to make a sarcastic comment about how “obvious” it is that white marble is a “representation of white supremacy” but then you actually said it and I’m beyond disappointed there are real articles about that
A UA-camr named Adam Something did just that and it was stupid. Thankfully, a dissident UA-camr named Ubersoy responded to that video.
Note that I said dissident because while he is socially very right wing, thus considered "far right", he is very left wing economically. He is not a traditionalist however. I still don't agree with some of his views on morality as I align more with traditionalists.
Why would anyone think that the marble color represented skin color anyway? That's right up there with milk representing "white supremacy." People are dumb.
Not really stupid (although I initially thought that as well). The partially painted sculptures were found in the middle ages as well, but were contributed to the barbarians and their vandalism. Later on (19th century and onwards) they would be purposefully removed because the idea of colorful statues was considered to be too tacky for the civilized Europeans and something that is more appropriate for the decadent Orient. Some of those articles might be overly concentrated on the white supremacist political propaganda, but there is some good information in there as well. I recommend reading the ones from NewYorker and DW.
Poe’s law (it’s impossible to satire or parody extremist views)
There are some 8 billion humans on this planet. Each human has their own beliefs that are in a constant state of _review and revision_ . You may as well be "disappointed" that humans fart. Opinions disappate like farts in a sand storm. Why go out of your way to _'sniff them out'_ .
I find it shocking how little most modern people know. We think of ourselves as "advanced" but none of us know how anything works, few of us have skills even close to those required to do these wonderful things.
True, the Stone Age would happen again if a total blackout happened.
We are ants atop the heads of giants, we are.
Makes you wonder if we're ripe for another collapse.
@@robertbeisert3315
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎
@@Battle_One
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌍
I saw an interesting documentary on two statues recovered from the Mediterranean. They were nude warriors, but what I found interesting was their hands & arms looked like they were styled to hold spears & shields (a bit like toy soldier hands today). This raised the question that, if they were meant to have weapons were they also meant to be clothed. Maybe some statues were nude so that clothing would hang more naturally off them (which wouldn't happen if clothes were part of the statue). Just a thought...
Intresting
Hmmmm, very good observation, it does make a lot is sense.
Marble Mannequins... Sounds expensive lol.
Mmh... Sorry but not!!!! If you talk about "Riace bronzes"....Two warriors find in the 80s... They are a classic Greek figures (surely with spears and shields lost on sea) and like any other classicist Greek opera they was naked...like heros or Olympic sportsman.... because they believe in the beautyfullness of the primordial human being!!!!! So Naked!!!!!😅😅😅
Greetings from Italy an Italian former mountain trooper Alpini 🇮🇹🇮🇹🇮🇹🇷🇺🇷🇺🇷🇺
@@DH-xw6jp
Not marble, bronze
I remember growing up thinking the Terracotta Warriors were all a shade of grey, but then I visited the Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an, I was blown away to find out they were originally in colour. The reason for the loss of colour was simply due to the decades of oxidisation after they were excavated. This is the reason a large part of them are still sealed underground. They want to develop a way to preserve them in every detail.
❤❤❤❤❤❤
Imagine walking through ancient Rome and seeing the bright colors instead of the monotonous marble we're used to. It's a vivid reminder that we should always question our assumptions and respect the past.
And yet you actually believe Metatron knows History? That's offensive to the past!! Because Metatron doesn't know History, and is nothing but a Bull sh*tter!
Archeologists and historians and astronomers make a lot of assumptions based on limited data.
The gleaming white marble fitted European misconceptions of Greece and Rome, despite _Greek and Roman writers_ referring to painted statuary.
@@julietfischer5056 Marble comes in other colors too. There's green marble which the Romans obtained from the island of Euboia, Greece where I live.
@@julietfischer5056what were the colors they said were used?
The best part about this is that they think white marble = white skin. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a person, caucasian or otherwise, who had skin the color of white marble. Maybe there’s some anemic goth redhead out there with perfectly white skin, but they would definitely be an anomaly.
@@rambunctiousvegetable yep the endless absurd conversations coming from US owning of the world "caucasian" as kinda Aryan n*zi type. Oh my 🙄
@@rambunctiousvegetable Sure, but Caucasian is the word that is used and everybody understands.
@@ronald3836 that's because most people are dumb. Let's not change word definition for the uneducated. We already have homophobic and transphobic which would imply a fear of guys or "trans" people. In reality they use as hate for rather than fear of.
Albino supremacy
I remember me and my friend discussing the game Tropico where all the island's buildings have a sort of run-down look you'd expect on a poor Caribbean island. But this is true even when they are newly built! The fishing wharf, for example, was apparently built fresh from rusty corrugated steel and weather-beaten timbers.
And then of course, there's the lovely Onion headline: *"Archaeologists uncover ancient race of skeleton people."*
😂
This does happen more often than you'd think in poor areas. Newly constructed "buildings" in the slums are constructed from trash thrown away by others. You think you are above the dumb thinking of others while doing your own sort of dumb thinking.
That's the case for a lot of games where you can build. Things look way too "rustic" despite being newly built. It can make sense in some games where you're building out of old scrap material, but then you also have weird random placements of boards and stuff that makes it look like a toddler built it.
I mean, I am willing to believe they would use already rusty steel for building in such a shithole. But decaying wood is much less believable.
As a bit of a history buff, I've always thought how can we know where we are going if we don't know where we come from.
I've always been amazed at the colours on temples and statues when things are shown how they once used to be. They enjoyed a riot of colour. It must have been amazing in many different cultures.
Love your channel Metatron.
"how can we know where we are going if we don't know where we come from. "
Aim for the landmark. You wake up on a boat with no memory of how you got there, but you see a beacon off in the distance. That would be a good choice of destination.
The thing I usually hate about the 'we added colour' stuff is that they're almost always dolloping it on as if the Romans were absolutely master artisans but painted like children with thick matte paints, no layering, and no shading.
I bet romans and greeks knew how to thin their paints. Nuln oil for everyone (hobby reference)
@@ConcernedPmGhost Turpentine, perhaps
Exactly! If you look at the frescoes, the Romans clearly knew how to make very realistic paintings, but for their statues, they used like five basic tones?! It's beyond ridiculous.
@@irena4545- The statues were seen at various times of day and in various seasons. Many were out in the open, vulnerable to the weather. Their paints may have been formulated for longevity or ease of mixing. An indoor fresco had only one viewing angle, and plenty of protection.
@@julietfischer5056 What determines the durability of the paint is the base, not the colours. If you can make multiple reds and layer them with one base then you have the ability to do it with others. Finished works are also glazed to protect them from touch, weather, and so on.
The actual answer most recreations suck is because they're done by amateurs, not professionals.
When I had classes in Greek archaeology back when I studied classical philology, a student asked if they didn't have roofs on the temples back in antiquity 😅 There were also some who were outraged about the colours! Especially when it came to the statues.
NEANDERTHALS = EUROPEAN = CAVE MEN
Did this student also ask why the Romans went through all the trouble of having a regular 1/1000 slope for their aquaducts, while purposely keeping some sections broken ?
@Duke_of_Lorraine Ha ha ha, no, but it was probably coming next!
I wonder if they ever painted the heads of cocks in a bright, eager red colour... Maybe a bright, pulsating pink colour for the inner labia of other statues. The variety of colours for statue nipples could keep paint-sellers in business for years!!
@@Duke_of_LorraineDo tell? Genuinely asking btw..
Thanks for this, in Ireland and I think Northern Europe generally people have the idea that castles were grey stone, when in fact the more often than not they were painted. As an example of this, there was a local castle bought by well known actor who restored it to live in it and many locals lost their minds because he had destroyed it🙄
I wonder if that is a sign of grey supremacy?! 🙃
@@ronald3836 👽History Channel believes so
I think another reason why white marble is a preferred material for figure statues is because of it's semi-transparent qualities. Healthy skin is coated with oil, so there's a slight shine on the surface. Western artists so acute in observing nature would recognize the glow of skin and glow of marble is similar, thus having a realistic, if not just beautiful, aesthetic.
No. It's because of old habits. It's also cheaper to have white marble than to get marble and get a specialised painter to paint it.
We take color paint for granted now, but 2000 years ago color pigments were frequently difficult to obtain and expensive. The use of colors in architecture was also a statement about wealth and prestige. UV light and erosion are the enemies of color coatings.
I remember learning how purple used to be one of the more expensive colors to make, thus it was associated with wealth and royalty. How true is that?
@@rixille Pretty true in the mediterranean area. During antiquity, purple dye and pigments were very hard to make. Tyrian purple was extracted from sea snails in a process that took a lot of time, and as a result was very expensive. Due to that high cost, only the richer classes (noble and royalty) were able to afford it and it became a symbol of prestige, and it became known as royal purple.
In some other regions there were other way to obtain purple pigments (for example, China used plants as a way to get a different purple hue). As a result, purple wasn't as highly regarded as in europe during the Classical and Medieval era.
@@rixille Purple was expensive, yes - but there is the additional layer of being legalized.
Purple was often reserved for the highest office and you were prohibited to wear purple.
To wear purple was interpreted as aspiring to be king. Well, you can imagine how that would have worked with the actual king and how it would be punished.
@@rixille its called royal-purple for a reason
@@rixille
Not all purple, but only the shade we know as royal purple, the color is still worn by Catholic cardinals. Back then thst particular shade was obtained from a type of shelled mollusk living in the Mediterranean. Somebody had to dive into the sea to get the molkusks ( sea snails), then they had to be processed, according to Pliny the elder thousands of snails were needed to produce an ounce of dye, the process was long and intricate thus making the die extremely expensive.
Not just the Classical period that people get wrong. Look at most modern interpretation of the Medieval period & most seem to think ot a uniform muddy brown. Colour was so important, to the point that only certain classes could use certain colours in some things.
Buildings were painted, friezes on walls, tapestries, murals. Clothing was expensive & so looked after. It could also be quite colourful. Decoration was everywhere.
Those Calvanistic reformers sucked the colour & joy out of life & art, so we now have an eduring view of the buildings & periods as being drab, dimly lit & muddy. But if you look the traces are there.
I don’t know this part of history. Did actually the Reformation harm artistic expression in Europe? This is very interesting and tells about the lack of art and taste in modern western civilisation a lot.
Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism is a staple in sociology for a reason. ;) - Indeed, viewing the world from a purely economic perspective, as the very foundation of modern civilization, is completely unheard of until the 16th century: Prior, the relation to/ worshipping of God/the Gods had to be expressed collectively in the outer world, to have any real meaning. Now, it becomes all about the individual and his ascetic-"rational" behavior to amass/invest/save as many bank notes as possible, to prove his personal worth before said God: Any ornament, any smallest excess, becomes a "sin" .
It took a long time for us to understand lightfastness, and consistently manufacture paints that fade slowly.. Most people now probably have no idea how fugitive many pigments used in previous centuries were.
Offering some nuance. There are certain denominations of Christians that take the 1st (or 2nd) commandment about having no graven images in a way that most or all arts related to religion are basically idolatry. I’m thinking of the kind of church that is basically a bland office room or warehouse. Admittedly there are plenty of other Protestant Christians that greatly value beauty and religious images, like high church Lutherans and Anglicans. So it depends on the denomination. But generally speaking, before the reformation, all apostolic Christians, the Catholics and Orthodox, were incredibly invested in religious art in statues, architecture, paintings, etc. Interestingly, there was a fair amount of controversy over religious images even before the reformation with Iconoclasm (they destroyed religious images) and perhaps Gnosticism (since they believe the physical world is evil and the spiritual world is good). The Cathars in the 1200s are sometimes recognized as proto-Protestants, and as Manichaean Dualists they were pretty iconoclastic too. Apparently the Reformation Protestants often found a foothold where Cathars used to be. However these were ultimately condemned as heresy and died out, but the Reformation on the other hand still has ties to today and it largely revived iconoclast thinking in certain areas. I assume their general argument was something like “focus on Jesus, religious art is a distraction”, while apostolic Christians and high church Protestants believed that religious art was precisely a way to honor God. So yes, the reformation plays a big role in the lack of beauty in modern western civilization. Even though some still honor beautiful images, some don’t, and even when a culture becomes secular this iconoclast tradition can be carried on. There’s even an argument to be made that the reformation sowed the seeds for modernism and relativism in our day, stemming from their rejection of a central ecclesial authority, effectively making every individual their own “pope,” being the sole interpreter of scripture, and from there people can become the sole interpreter of any matter of truth, morals, and probably beauty.
@@killianmiller6107 Luther created modern art, got it.
I had a teacher, during my undergrads studies in History, who actively worked on Assassin's Creed two releases ; Egypt and Greece. She is an archeologist, egyptologist and historian, hired by Ubisoft for advice on how life was in Greece and Egypt. When they were working on Origins, she would come very late to class, sometimes even cancel it, but she always gave us a few hints. She was most certainly under a non-disclosure contract, and could not tell us what is going on. But any historians can give hints that can be understood, and she did so with us. We knew what it would look like, even before they released the first images of the game.
So your college teacher skipped out on classes to make a video game, and the biggest thing you got out of the class was what the game was going to look like. AM I correct in your explanation? If so I wonder if you are one of those that are looking for your college loans to be forgiven cause you know....your education wasn't worth a shit.
Why didn’t she tell them that ancient Greeks werent black or Arab?
@@BBeowulf There are black Greeks and Arabs in the game ? I think I saw only one black woman, but that's not a big deal. I don't think the contracted historians have a say in the PC squad's decisions and the diversity aims of the devs.
@@BBeowulfBecause there are no black and Arab Greeks in the game.
So she robbed you of your classes, and you worshipped her in return. How disgusting!
It's always fascinated me to think that some statues may have been dressed in actual clothing suitable for the time of year or relating to festivals/events etc.
I actually read that AC Odyssey was a lot more colorful, but testers didn't believe it was real and looked too fake so they had to tone it down. Not sure how true it is, but I know they were at least trying to make it look completely real for once.
They missed a big time by not including lack of paint into the assassin's creed world conspiracy. That the idea of white sculptures exist to hide something and in rennesaince it was templates that scrubbed the sculptures off.
Had the statues retained a lot of their paints by the time of the Renaissance (or today) many of those pigments will have changed colour anyway. Some colours will have lightened, others darkened. Even a surface level of grime can change pearly whites into dingy greeny browns which you won't be able to revert without proper cleaning.
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎 Black
But if the pigments (or more of them) had survived we would get a more accurate idea of what they had initially looked.
@@kaltaron1284 It would be great. But we have some decent DNA reconstructions, right? That's pretty cool.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9slol consider getting help for that copium addiction, and get back to your cave 😂.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s Obvious troll is obvious.
I believe the entire fascination with the 'all white' aesthetic is because time itself has seemed to produced accidental artistic beauty... Think of wine or bronze statues... The more time passes, the more profound it seems.
i first learned that ancient art was often fully painted back in the 1980s when I purchased and read a title by Osprey on the Macedonian army of Alexander that based the color plates on the Alexander Sarcophagus. Excellent and informative video.
To quote an another commenter i saw: "I see Metatron, i click"
NEANDERTHALS = EUROPEAN = CAVE MEN
I click UA-cam , I see Metatron !
Don’t we all?
@@skibidi.GI see click, UA-cam Metatron.
@@jonathancortez3003
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌎 Black
The fact that ancient greek statues tried yo be as close to the real thing as possible was something that clicked to me when i read Plato's republic. On the tenth chapter plato said that artists where scammers 'cause they tried to represent reality through their creations, making just an illusion of reality. And by artists most of us would assume just painters, but it's probable that plato referred also to sculptors
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎 Black
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s but enough about the primates
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sCaucasians!
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s get out of here troll!
I dont let my woman wear makup for the same reason,im not about that fake life..
I had an Art History class in college and during one the professor's lectures on the classical age, he mentioned that the Romans and Greeks most certainly painted their buildings and sculptures and encouraged us to imagine the glory of those buildings and sculptures to understand how culture, society, the current events of the day influenced the very art they were creating. Probably one of favorite history classes I ever took. Made me realize the importance of art to our collective history.
Thank you! It's a shame people don't know how colorful the ancient world was. You should do a video like this on the middle ages, too, because I think people's perception of the middle ages is even more monochromatic than the ancient world. They don't realize that castles were lime plastered and beautifully panted on the inside, and would have been gleaming brightly when viewed from afar. Much closer to a modern fairytale castle than the typical drab medieval castle pictured in film. And it had the same practical purpose as it did in the ancient world. Exposed stone doesn't last very long in freeze thaw cycles, and the lime plaster protected the buildings. Much easier and cheaper to patch up some lime plaster than have to repoint your stonework every year.
I love the re-colorized versions of the statues and especially of works in Sumeria. I had no idea that these statues were painted until I took "Ancient Art in Archaeology'. It's wild that this isn't common knowledge, because it's so simple to see, once you know it.
There are 19th century oil paintings of temples in Egypt after being dug up, some with remains of color decorations. Faded by today, but it was still visible during the first half of the 19th century.
I don't know about your country, but here in Italy we learn these things in early school actually. We have several subjects dedicated to the study of the arts, so this is basic knowledge.
Same in Ireland, young children's history books represent the statues, temples, clothing, hairstyles correctly. It also works both ways, whites have been plating, braiding, deadlocking hair in Ireland for thousands of years for example.
@@mds_main It depends on the stigma behind our methods of literally digging into the past. The UK and other countries in Europe are much more open to archaeology and the resulting historical information garnered by the practice. The US and Canada are much more careful in order to be sensitive to the lifeways of people from Indigenous nations. The fact that archaeology-related topics AREN’T taught about in US schools is an actual, present day debate in the field of anthropology.
There is nothing that bothers me more than trying to promote current ideologies with misinterpretations of history or worse, doing it consciously, seeking to convince people of their follies. Archaeological evidence and original historical sources are the weapons that must always be used to debunk all the absurd theories that are being invented, because they only take what is convenient for them and alter it to their benefit. Hopefully more people manage to disseminate the contents of honest people who are truly passionate about authentic historical dissemination, such as Metatron, keep it up.
As a Greek, I actually didn't know that people in foreign countries had this issue 😂. We learnt all these in young age.
Aw, American classes about history tends to be rather slapdash. "So here's some proof of evolution, and here's some Clovis spearpoints to prove that humans killed off the mastadons in Canada, and we'll skip ahead to the Civil War, but mostly talk about how bad slavery is, then skip the World Wars to focus on how Vietnam proved we're jerks for messing with other countries." And now I'm sure they'll be adding entire lessons on how Trump tried to take over the world through social media but "the right side of history" managed to stop him. (Speaking as someone who isn't particularly fond of Trump's style, they've still accused him of ten times what he actually did. It's sad, and makes out country look like a pack of idiots. But for some reason, the people who don't like it here won't leave.)
It is always so wonderful to meet a fellow brother or sister , who is on the path !!! Thank you for your research & spoken truth , on this so misunderstood topic of art & architecture !!!
I'm just imagining future archaeologists seeing displays of our tabletop miniatures unpainted and pondering how they were originally painted. Well, mine weren't, so that will be historically accurate.
Supposing those survive, we know those figures are not too durable
@@zanir2387 - can we have a little fun? The pewter and lead ones might survive. The lead ones might lead to theories about why we were so violent.
@@zanir2387plastic is pretty durable, and takes a long time to break down... so even if the glue breaks down, the parts might survive and I might be exactly like reassembling the bits, like a stone statute.
If they find my friend's models, they would have a lot of questions about how we understood physiology and proportions, for example"why does this human form have massive arms, twice the size of a normal human?"... I see my friends models and I have a lot of questions, and I fully understand what he was trying to do...
@@PB-tr5ze Warhammer Venus di Milo
You also forgot to mention how this applies to the medieval era as well. We imagine castles as all gray and purely made of stone now, but they actually used to be covered in paint as well (usually painted in white on the outside, and covered in a huge variety of colors on the inside), and would often also have many wooden structures built onto them (particularly if they were cheaper castles).
You can even extend this to the people of the time. Everyone imagines most medieval people to be poor peasants wearing brown potato sacks covered in poo all the time, but this is not true. Even the peasants were human just like us, and they still took pride in how they looked. They bathed relatively often and likely owned at least one nice outfit that would not be too far off what you would imagine a nobleman would wear. Plus, not everyone was a peasant working on the fields, even if it was technically the majority of people, there still existed many skilled craftsmen and merchants who were a bit wealthier than the average person.
I like to imagine most castles being quickly and cheaply made however. These are weapons of war meant to last long periods of time under siege. You don’t need a fortress to be brightly colored and a work of art when being grey and mundane allows it to not only blend in with its surroundings but it gives it a sense of redundancy and standardization.
@@therealspeedwagon1451
This is not true though. Castles were primarily used as a home for the noble that lived in it that also just so happened to contain space for soldiers defending the lord. They were fortified due to the “Balkanized” nature of Europe at the time and how frequently raids and feuds occurred on the local level. Fortresses that existed purely for martial reasons did not start to exist until maybe the 1500s after the Middle Ages when feudalism was ending and nation-states were starting to form, and therefore there was less conflict on a local level but instead on a national level.
Everyone was just covered in poo back in the day. 😂 How widespread the lack of any basic logic is shows how little we’ve evolved from our earlier simian forms.
@@RestitutorEuropa
I mostly agree with you
But ancient Romans may built fortresses for army purposes.
Ancient Egiptians surelu did to guard their territories.
In medieval knights were more independent than nobility in ancient times.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 What you like to imagine was wrong.
Whitewashing the castle walls was pretty much standard practice.
Also made it look like a much grander building, which is obviously what rulers and nobles would want.
The actual history is always more impressive than the imagined.
I do have pity on those who think that self worth lays in the past & not in their character, but you are an excellent teacher many will get there thanks to your dedication to genuine history.✌️💗🤘
Είχα μάθει από μικρός ότι έβαφαν οι αρχαίοι το μάρμαρο και μου έκανε εντύπωση. Παρόλο που κάποια έργα τα ανακαίνιζαν σε εκθεσιακούς χώρους συνδιάζοντας το παλιό μάρμαρο με το νεο ποτέ δεν έβαφαν το ανακαινισμένο κομμάτι για να δείξουν μια πιο πιστή αναπαράσταση του αρχαίου. Ακομα δεν καταλαβαίνω γιατι δεν τα βάφουν.
You can also take a trip down to Pompei. There are fully intact artworks in the remains of the ruins. Even down to the presence of three dimensions in the artwork. The real interesting part is then going to look at some renaissance artwork where they had lost the understanding of how to paint in three dimensions.
The colors used also indicated the relative 'wealth' of the 'patron'. As some colors were more native to Italy while other colors were imported and thus more expensive.
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌎 Black
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s Go to hill richard.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sblacks not a colour 🤦♂️
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s Lol no writing and no wheel in Africa until Portuguese said hello. 40,000 years aboriginals inhabited Aussieland- invented a stick.
Even today, worthless people. There's sub-Saharans, and then there is the rest of humanity who don't have an average IQ of 85.
But, surely 'we waz kangs' overrides these facts.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sWtf are you talking about?
As a proud Greek living abroad for the past 9 years, I want to thank you, as your videos genuinely resonate with me. Your evidence-based content is awe-inspiring to watch!
*As a Greek, you should be angry at how Anglo, Saxon, and Germanic peoples have used your culture as the basis of "Western Civilization" whilst leaving actual Greeks out of the ideal they've created.* To them you're nothing more than tanned Celts.
@@StupidusMaximusTheFirst *Those are the same Greeks with a little more of everyone else mixed in as Alexander wanted.* The belief that the people who live in an area are no the same people as their ancestors is a product of northern Europeans' supremacists mythology. Obviously, you remembered every BS they taught you in school.
Despite the ower focus on the south in the scoolbooks here i always loved the aincient mediterranian, particulary around the Levant, I highly reccomend Jacques Cousteaus original books when he and he's team where diving in the sea of the the Greek coast before all those remnants had been disturbed. That is a real hidden herritage of global dignity most tourists are completely unaware of those days. Both You and I should be proud of our ancestors and the history of the respective part of the world we are coming from and the amazing history we are blessed to be a part of!
@@StupidusMaximusTheFirst μπα, τα ιδια καθαρματα με εμας σημερα, ηταν και εκεινοι τοτε.
Prostagma. Leje? Vulome. Malista. Kalos. Esvoli!
Is not so difficult to imagine how the ancient statues could have been colored. Just look any religious image on a Catholic church and you'll see it. Specially the wooden images since Romanic, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque... they all are fully painted as most of the old images were. We think on them as white because of Neoclasicist way of understanding art on XVIII and XIX centuries. The first antiquaries and art historians on that time studied the remaining pieces and artists tried to reproduce the classical art as they saw it in their time. Good video pal as usual the Metatron fights in defense of History.
A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be taking a tour of the castle Hohensalzburg. During the tour we passed a wall where they had recently reopened a portal that had been covered and plastered over about 800 years earlier. In reopening the feature the exposed plaster wall surfaces which had been covered since that time. I was surprised to see that the plaster had been painted the most vibrent shades of red, blue and gold! Maybe the "dark ages" hadn't been so dark after all!
The "dark ages" are only dark, because almost all written sources from back then have been destroyed. It's not that they didn't write, far from it, but most all of it has been lost in fires and accidents, some of it purposely destroyed, to hide evidence or fit a narrative, just like modern government destroys inconvenient documents.
"Dark ages" was a term invented by Enlightenment scholars as a way of putting down the Catholic church, since it dominated Europe in that period. While I'm no defender of the church, and I agree with much of what the Enlightenment accomplished (especially regarding concepts of individual rights and democratic governance), I think it is a real shame that most people still tend to think of the "middle ages" (a put-down invented during the Renaissance) as a time of complete darkness and ignorance. When I was a European History teacher I tried to dispel that notion, at least for my students. It is my favorite period of history.
It's always great to know that a lot of academics are still open for correction whenever evidence is presented.
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌍
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s 🤡🤡🤡
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s Please, stop spamming everywhere.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s I'm sure we were a middle-light shade of brown when my mother side were still headhunters and a little mestizo on my father's side. I'm filipino.
Most academics are willing, the methods (historical and scientific) produce the goods to the point where you really can't ignore the results haha
People who think everything is rooted in hate are probably telling you a lot about themselves
Beautiful and well done 👍 my thumb is not that color, and not even close to it. I love your show and teaching. When I was a kid being taught classical greek and roman history it was good; but didn’t really scratch nothing but the surface. I did my own research and delved deeper than what I was taught. This puts a new spin on things. Thanks again
I'd love to see a full size colored replica of an Egyptian temple as well. It's hard to imagine how completely covered in color the ancient world really was. Maybe someday we might even been able to see the entire interral tomb of China's first emperor along with his colorful terracotta army fully painted! How incredible a thought.
One thing that's always struck me with the reconstruction of colours on these old statues, is that to my eye, as a nerdy miniature wargamer, is that they always look like they've been base coated.
I actually think there would have been far more layers of paint on top of the colours we have remaining traces of, adding the mid tones, highlights, shading and blends to give more realistic and vivid colours.
Given how incredibly skilled the sculptors were, I just don't see the painters slapping a single flat tone across these works and calling it a day, basically. I think the painters would have had to have learnt and implemented more complicated painting techniques, because they're not that hard to do and would quickly allow more skilled painters to charge higher prices for their work.
The people painting these statues don't have the skill to replicate the color, nor the shape.
Yeah, over the course of thousands of years all those layers of paint eventually begins to wear off leaving only the base coating. Of course they layered their sculptures to make them look more realistic.
Do mind that getting paint in antiquity was a far harder endavour than today.
That may very well have been what the top skill looked like, because that's simply what tools they had.
@@A_B_1917
You only have to look at the frescos in Pompeii to see that Roman painters knew what they were doing. The reason why the " restored" colors look ridiculous is because what you are seeing are the results of poor quality photoshop layering
@@Fankas2000They vould hire specialised painters. Frescoes were painted. There were many craftsman dedicated to the art.
* Painter here.... Although I've known for a while of the Roman/Hellenistic statues and temples being painted... I still think the replications given as examples today still look too garish and almost clownish; I imagine the actual colors used would be modeled in such a way as to look complimentary and even natural, not like airbrushed monotones on a Vegas mural.
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌎 Black
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s Are you one of those crazy delusional people who think everyone in the classical Mediterranean world was black? Not even real African tribal people/ nations define themselves as "black" but by their language/culture/traditions... you don't have a real culture or your own native language so you have to practice the inverse racism of those who ripped you away from the real culture of your ancestors. Race don't mean shit, culture does.
I heard something very similar, seeing how many Roman mosaics are I can't think that they painted with such flat colours, possibly they would use many more leftovers and shades that were lost with the passing of time.
@@m.r.6760 my thoughts exactly. It doesn't look right.
Metatron, I love your content. I am impatient with its delivery. I love your vocabulary. I’m reminded of the movie, Mozart, when the emperor says, “too many notes.” I think your channel would be well served by an editor who would slash your scripts’ lengths by 1/3 0r 1/4 without reducing the number of topics.
Hi Metatron, congrats on your channel and thank you for debunking mountains of unbelievable nonsense! In the video you specify that monochromatic architecture/sculpture begins with the Italian Renaissance, do you think that medieval architecture/sculpture were also polychromatic like the ancient ones (except of course the wooden sculpture, clearly always painted)?
When a random stranger on the internet tells me I am wrong I give them little heed
When a reputable person on the internet says I'm wrong and gives me facts, I am more than happy to accept it
I love the idea of the ancient world in colour, thank you Metatron!
I get the feeling that a lot of people who worked on Assassin's Creed wanted to make models of cities or some other sort of work, but found that the only marketable way to employ those skills was in a video game.
Historical movies with this accurate description of Classical and Medieval times would be so great by the way.
The best comparison I've heard someone make when comparing ancient rome to renaissance sculpture is that "what if civilization rebuilt itself after a post-apocalyptic event and fashioned all their architecture to look like blown out toppling skyscrapers." That's what happened with the renaissance and rome.
Great content, as always! I also suspect in countries subject to strong sunlight, vivid use of color on temples, statues and monuments is the norm. Ancient Egyptian temples, paintings, funeral equipment, sarcophagus and even some statues were painted as well. While they wore white linen, the makeup, jewelry and pharonic regalia was very colorful.
How do the “Metropolitan Museum of Art” experts explain the practically black bronze statues of the past?
if you actually think the met museum, staffed by some of the top art historians in the world, is literally so stupid as to be stumped by something like this then i suggest you do a little more reading. what they said which caused such controversy is that white supremacists latched onto the fiction of white marble statues, and built their grand historical myths around it. they did not say the renaissance sculptors were nazis because that would be insane.
: Was the Met _really_ propping up that Silly Idea? Or were they saying that the fact some people think that made them adress the original color of the art, but with the flaw that they didn't debʊnk that mɨsconçeption? That would still be a "Polɨtɨcal reason", but the article that Raf is quoting from is not from the Met's website- it seems to be a ʟeft-wɨng website that perhaps the Met's representative was pɑndeɾing to by Cɾɨme of Not Refʊting- but the Met's actual website, which I trust more then any second hand source about the Muesuem's beliefs, does not mention it.
honestly i really like the colored statues. one of my favorite things about ac odyssey was exploring all the temples to look at the art. corinth was my favorite.
Thank you so much for this video. All of it was really interesting and really well explained.
The tale that Daedalus' sculptures were so lifelike people chained them down lest they run away makes so much more sense now.
Nashville, TN, USA has a replica of The Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Its full size Athena statue is beautifully painted.
That's right, Metatron, and that's why your channel is so important. It's a deep dive into history, all the way down to the stitch, as far as you can. You should be hitting 1 mil subs soon, and from there, 2 mil by next Christmas, if my estimation is correct.
Thanks for keeping it real. All our history is wrong.
NEANDERTHALS = EUROPEAN = CAVE MEN
Not all, but enough to require a rebuilding of the realm of knowledge.
Not all our history is wrong, it's just ever evolving and unfortunately most people only interact with it at school and so gain a vague education of the understanding at their time.
@@archiebf4524
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎 Black
@@archiebf4524 My greater point was the old adage, "History is written by the Victors." So much is lost.
Quite often; the higher culture was overrun by savages and libraries burned. If anybody is going to uncover the ancient texts, when they become deciphered, I know Metatron will give us a video. Just saying.
What colourful and inspiring, well illustrated, presentation, once more,. Metatron. Every time and again I find gems I can use for describing surroundings in my stories. Thank you.
This is the same thing I always say about the Pyramids of Egypt. A lot of Egyptian architecture is rich in intelligent and understanding of both the world and even the stars themselves. Their incite into color, shapes, frequency, and the math of all of it is interesting. Such knowledge should have been almost impossible to know and yet not only did they have high level of knowledge of these subject, but their understanding of it surpassed our own even with our technology in some ways. The fact that Egyptian architecture and the Pyramids contributed to Nikola Tesla's research of the world, which helped him create the foundations for technologies we use today, is amazing to think about. History may not repeat, but it rhymes. So I think that some ancient cultures had they own version of modern tech that was wiped away by calamities of the past.
I mean, I've also thought of the classical all white. But I've also thought that with all the "burnt" sculptures and temple remains that there was more to it, especially the left overs of the original paint. Just as the Medieval Cultures LOVED color, the Ancient and Classical Worlds also LOVED color. Just as we as the current global contemporary cultural paradigm: LOVE COLOR.
The aesthetic of the kind of folk that love ALL-White: Sci-Fi Authoritarian Dystopian Empires . . . .
Neanderthals Europeans cave men and cave dwellers
I think part of the reason some people think of classical as all white (at least for people in the US), is all of the interpretations of it in Washington DC are basically all white.
Actually, color is "disappearing" in our global cultural paradigm. Home design, architecture, product design, clothes ; name it. Color has been disappearing fast in the last decades and everything is now in shades of white, grey, black, etc. There's some very interesting graphics about it.
Main reason for that : neutral tones are easier to sell in a universal scale, hence why big multinational companies create neutral white/grey/black products that are more versatile. Same thing for home design ; it's easier to sell a neutral looking home/appartement than one with flashy colors. But I would add the prominence of VERY colourful screens and lights in our life to the reasons as well. We're constantly looking at our phones, computers, etc. We're actually saturated by colors and magnificient image of ever greater quality, which, in my opinion, makes us reach for more neutral environment in the "real" world. And there's kind of a color renewal with the extensive use of led lights to create ambiance in rooms or public places though, but it's like we don't really want to commit to one in particular, we want it to be dynamic.
@@pscm9447 I honesty think the fact that homes and buildings today are drab in color really fits in with our global paradigm: are lives are drab and the only things that are bright and colorful are the fake images on our screens. I love neutrals but man, is modern architecture depressing. The fact that grey is the "new color" in new American homes makes me want to c*t myself
I dissent a bit. The scie fi authoritharian dystopian frame can be accurate for today west folks but for a Renassaince artist it was about re-enacting the vitality of classical culture (wrongly thought as "white" ) and was also in a cultural frame of art - perfection , light, eternity, archetypal essentiality. And also lavish , prestige materials. Michelangelo wasn't dreaming of dystopian totalitarianism, was all about achieving and showing the world timeless beauty in longest lasting material he could use and with the brightest result. A forever shining archetype of beauty and virtue (which beyond colours was indeed a very darling idea to classical world, good and beautiful get along together). And so I guess than in our current cultural frame at least as weterners / west influenced people we tend to perceive the whiteness in most of statues more commomly in a classical and Renassaince (beauty and culture standing the test of time)key than some Kubrik Odissey visual (I feel kinda frozen when I see those scenes😳)
Hello Metatron. I did not take up the place at university for archeological science, but I did a science degree and made and painted wargames figures.
I tried to explain that I understood about paint and colour to an artist in Cornwall, but they were offended that a scientist would claim to have an idea about art and colour. I tried to explain that sculpting figures myself, then painting them in a style or designing a medieval village to print and build were a skill, but I was getting nowhere. It seemed the idea of studying many things is not valued like it once might have been in the time of great art from your country.
What a finding your channel is for me ! Don't change anything ! You bring a lot to your contemporaries. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for keeping the record straight for all these years. You're getting close to a million subs. That means that you have almost a million people who actually know about "real" history. So again, thank you for all your hard work.
'Real' history, wow so this is what UA-cam is reduced to. Someone who posts videos with strong neo-fascist overtones is a 'historian' because there are thousands of idiots who want to be feed this slop.
Historians are NEVER popular. No true HISTORIAN was a rock star and most people cannot tell you the name of one historian. True history is pretty boring and the average person will fall asleep 15 minutes into it.
Sadly this is the nature of truth: it turns out to be boring. Quantum physics, advanced mathematics, complex philosophy, and history done properly will only attract a handful of people.
The masses want fantasy and UA-cam is providing plenty of unqualified 'experts' to feed what ever they want to believe.
I even saw a video by leftists in the UK that had a black female actress presenting herself as a worker in the 1970s and talking about how she had life time work and benefits provided to her along with free education.
The process of exploitation of the past happens the second a moment has passed. People in the United States are talking about cheap gas during the last Trump years as if they was some wonderful policy that benefited everyone, they have utterly censored the fact that gas got cheap, to the point US producers could not compete, because of CoVid lock downs bringing the demand for gasoline radically down.
When I lived in Tunisia I was struck by how Hannibal was seen as a hero. Hannibal was responsible for the destruction of Carthage. In France people still respect Bonaparte despite the fact he ruined France. Many Greeks still see Alexander as a hero despite his family's war and destruction of much of Greece.
If I had my way I would restrict the study of history to old people and a few autistic people. I have found that every time people talk about history they are planning something evil.
Who said that white marble was used because of white "supremacists "ideology?
Why even respond to such foolishness?
Instead why not address the real outcome of the Cairo symposium,or melanin test of pre-dynastic and old kingdom Egyptian mummies? You choose the battles nobody else is trying to fight and avoid questions and answers that are difficult for you to address. nobody's trying to " rewrite"history, just right a wrong. If you were really interested in the truth you would understand that
@@BobHooker Woah... aren't we lucky you won't get your way.
Metatron is neo-fascist? What? How? Why? I haven't seen any evidence of that.
Thousands of years of UV exposure, wind and rain weathering has substantially altered the physical appearance of all ancient buildings. While much of the original design components remain the cosmetic design elements in antiquity have been lost to ages.
Great Topic today Metatron!
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎 Black
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s If the marble they were made of was black.. it will be at least gray today :)
Oh yes.. there is a black marble :)
And colonising the world does not have anything to do with that.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sWhy are you so jealous?
@@scorchedearth4248its a fucking bot, check every comment's reply
@@scorchedearth4248
We are the oldest people on earth we are 7 million years old white Europeans are only 45 hundred years old white Europeans were the last species to arrive on earth 🤔
This is really interesting. You don't have to go back to the ancient world to see the conflict between expectations and reality. In Europe, many of the figures carved on the outside walls of medieval churches and cathedrals were painted and gilded, which I think would look almost pagan to modern eyes. In England, we tend to "Tudorbethan" all our old timber framed buildings. Here in York, we paint the medieval buildings in the city, black and white, almost automatically, but the archaeology shows many were terracotta and pinkish - medieval York was Barbieville! Expectations are so entrenched that when the York Civic Trust renovated Barley Hall in the middle of York several years ago, there was a great debate regarding painting it accurately or going for the white walls and timbers everybody expected. In the end, it was painted white as opposed to the pinkish terracotta, all indications showed it had been. This was so visiting school parties would instantly see it as a Tudor building. The past really is another country.
That’s tragic, people in charge of those things should have a higher regard for restoring them not re imagining them. I love learning new information about history that goes outside what I had thought prior, I’m sure most of the visiting school kids would’ve too had they been given the chance.
I remember my uncle telling me that all those now white cottages seen all over the county would have been painted originally in a shade known as Suffolk Pink - allegedly made from either pigs blood for the darker shade or blackcurrants for the lighter shade mixed in with the lime wash.
I was recently in Canterbury and they are in the process of restoring the structure, which includes cleaning centuries of accumulated dust and grime from the walls, buttresses, and spires. The stone is suddenly so bright! We tend to imagine "gothic" cathedrals as grey or dark-colored...when first completed they must have gleamed like beacons to people for miles around. I wish I could go back once they finish the restoration and just take it in.
@njhoepner Good point. You could say the same about interiors. We are used to seeing oak furniture as dark, in some cases almost black, but when it was constructed five hundred years ago, the wood was a light honey colour. This is also true of the flooring and any exposed beams. If you take that into account, suddenly the past becomes a much brighter place.
@@shonagriffiths8907 We likely have a lot of things wrong in terms of what we think the past looked like.
As always, an interesting and informative journey into a lovely past. Thank you, Metatron!
@Metatron, your last 2 videos this and This is NOT your History are great! Keep up the good work!
A part of the monochrome reason might be the "modern" obsession with materials. It is partly understandable - when you put 100 000 euro into a perfect slab of Carrara Statuario, you want to see the perfect slab without the color. First of all, people imagine it was all marble but not everything was marble in the ancient times and they probably did not obsess so much about the slabs of marble as we do now or as Michelangelo did back in Renaissance. Especially nowadays there is a great shortage of high quality marble making it extremely expensive. In the ancient times, there was noone stopping romans from mining the whole of Alpi Apunae for marble and there wasn't as big of a demand for that marble. Yes, the labor was more challenging (although maybe not as expensive as it is now, I don't know about that), the stone was still expensive, but not that expensive because there was plenty of stone for the amount of people that required it. Now the whole world wants it making it extremely expensive so we want to see it when we make something from it and when a layman sees an ancient marble statue, they view it through this viewpoint, that the stone was expensive and they also wanted to see it, which is not really the case.
Pignments, particularly those that would fade, were themselves luxury items in Classical times. To adorn a statue with color was to display one's wealth and power. The interior of most Classical buildings attest to this. The rich could afford decoration.
That's an interesting point I hadn't considered. Many things that were considered the norm back then are now considered a luxury and vice versa due to changes in either supply or demand.
With modern logistics, stone is no longer necessarily a locally quarried and used good; whether it be quality marble, or aggregate destined for use in concrete.
That said, there has also been a lot of research lately that suggests that less colour is used in consumer products today than just a few decades ago; brands and companies are more likely to play it safe nowadays when it comes to colour in consumer goods. Modern fabrication and mass-manufacture has led to a decreased emphasis on making products unique to a physical location, as this narrows the potential consumer base.
As most statues are no longer bespokely made, there are fewer patrons that will be complaining about the lack of a life-like complexion on the statue of their beloved subject.
@@OutOfNamesToChoose I'd also argue that colors tend to track with trends. For example, there was a period in the 80-90's where bright, clashing and cartooney colors were popular. This transitioned into blacks, greys and silvers around 2000, and we are mostly still in that era today, albeit with a much stronger emphasis on single-tone themes brought on by Apple's color and material design language.
@@GhostOnTheHalfShell yes, another good point, thanks. Because of the industrialisation and artificial colors now you can buy any color dirt cheap from any local store, but in the classical times some pigment was almost as expensive and as the stone itself was.
@@thrustvectoring8120 have you also noticed that today colours for goods in general seem different from yesterday goods , not only for style and trend change but also for brilliance and I'd dare to say "texture"? Same tones looking like they have different chemical formula and different at touch. I have friends into design and furniture production who joke a lot about "the good old intoxicating colours" 😁 btw history of colours , their changing meaning thru the ages and context and the way they were/are produced is such an incredibile rabbit hole. It can tell us so much.
I picked up on this info a while back, but I am glad it’s now 100% established.
And yes, imagine what it would be like to walk around these places during the “high-time” of the temples and art in the ancient Roman and Greek cities!
It’s not hard to understand why the Romans had so high thoughts of their civilisation and culture.
Just as the even more ancient Egyptians before them, which was even ancient to the Romans at the Empires’ all-time high. From a bit before Christ to about 100 years + after the death of Christ.
The history of humanity is awesome!
Always enlightening ! Thank you so much . Blessings
Your content and channel continue to amaze and inspire!
I have a fascination with picturing the real ancient world from the perspective of an ordinary person on the street and what it might have REALLY looked and felt like. When imagining the ancient world, above all, i trust that the artists of the period who's work we still have, knew what their world looked like.
When it comes to ancient Greece and Rome, i tend to imagine the soldiers and weapons would have a similar vibe to warriors like the zulu. And the streets themselve having a similar vibe to some of the Middle Eastern streets and markets in developing countries today. Densely packed with all kinds of merchants and services everywhere. But also some of the various stuff you shared over time gave me the impression that the Romans were Italians and that Rome would have had an Italian vibe as people today would recognize.
Of course they were Italians, the Romans originated in Latium, a region in central Italy. Originally they were part of a group of tribes living on the banks of the Tiber river who referred to themselves as Latini. The way a Roman village or town would have looked would have been different according to the time period. Roman history spans a period between 753 BC, the traditional date for the foundation of Rome to 476 AD the year of the fall of the western Roman empire that is more than 1200 years of history.
@esmeraldagreen1992 what i meant by that is the overall style appearance of their environment would appear Italian to people today
This is what REALLY upsets me. We have elite academic institutions that fail in thinking critically. Yet a single UA-camr can articulate the subject a thousand times better than any psuedo-academic jackhole sitting in their comfy office in a job that they should probably get fired and thrown out into the streets with the tent makers.
Except for Ronald Hutton, one of my favourite people
Please don’t insult tent makers - St. Paul the Apostle supported himself by making & repairing tents until he “appealed to the Emperor”, when the authorities in Jerusalem tried to kill him in 55 A.D.
@Jcdoyel - The exhibition Gods in Color has been touring the world in one form or another since 2003. So it is not even known in academic circles for a long time but public exhibitions that tours the world and I have seen it myself, but it was nothing new to me at the time.
@@TraditionalAnglican You mean the person who imagined to have been in the third heaven and heard voices in his head claiming to communicate with a god? That puts him on the same level as someone claiming to be abducted by aliens and getting messages from aliens on Beteigeuze.
Lots of university programs have accurately taught people that ancient statues and buildings used color. It is pretty common if you had even a single art history 101 course.
This video is so help! I am writing my first fantasy novella series with different civilizations in each book, connecting thr mythologies. This is so helpful for my first book in particular because it is based in Ancient Greece.
There is the ruins of a Roman Villa 2 minutes walk from my house here in the UK. It still has all of its very colourful mosaic floors. It makes perfect sense that they would also paint their statues too.
The temple of Karnak is a good example of what happens to paint over time, while the outside shares much of the same color as the surrounding area the inside is very colorful, not so much the walls exposed to the wind, but the inside of the roof is still very colorful, and the painted walls in the tombs in the valley of kings to mention another example
One of the reasons I loved by Origins and Odyssey was to see the temples in full colour, full presentation. Even best guess. Those were buildings that saw ten of thousands of hours of work put into them.
Even as the former Egypto-phile that I am, it was amazing.
Excellent.
Loved the pics of colorized temples etc
👍
Amazing video, narration and detail. Well done!
Some of those examples were hilarious! Seeing how meticulous and perfect the carving itself was on the statues, I'm sure the painting was exquisitely detailed as well. I know it's not metatrons fault for the reference photos provided by the internet being so primitive looking... But the actual statues in their day would have been extremely detailed and beautiful.
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌎 Black
The painters would’ve used shades, fine details and techniques to give the statues a lifelike appearance.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sThey weren't black.
@@user-vp3nh5qs9sromans definitly are not Black lol...
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s stop being a racist spaming nonsense everywhere.
I have been watching your content the last few days. I love your need to tell historical truth. Where have you been the last few years. You put to words my sadness at the description of Cleopatra on Netflix. That is how I found you. This is a great video.
What color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌍
@@user-vp3nh5qs9s People were the various colors of their various regions. Just like this channel describes.
I think that the full argument should go like that: the perception of ancient statues and buildings as grey/white is heavily impacted by the bias that we have now. When we think about ancient statues and buildings, many times our perception is distorted by the presence of renaissance and classicist style in art and architecture. And these styles, while based heavily on ancient era, use plain materials. It is highly likely that the renaissance and classicist artists and architects didn't use color, because by their time, all ancient artifacts that served as templates were colorless, so they assumed that it should be so.
So it is possible that the dominance of the Western civilisation in renaissance and classicist era is partially responsible for misrepresentation of antiquity. On the other hand, without the interest in antiquity by the Western Europeans, it is likely that ancient artifacts would have been lost to a greater extent that they are now.
This is an amazing video, thank you for this information.
Well I saw half the video xD I'm glad someone is making these,so far you are from the few sources I can point when I want foreigners to hear about my ancient history (ancient Hellas 🇬🇷) .
Cuz the things most foreigners tell me...is dumb ...especially modern politically full paper...
Anyway I'm happy to see this ,good luck and I hope more people see your videos
Neanderthals Europeans cave men and cave dwellers
Oh, lastly, do not forget that many statues was literally covered with gold, silver, bronze or other precious metals.
Its common to read about chronicles like during the Peloponnesiac War, about greeks preparring for war against Sparta, counting as a possible source of income the gold plates that was used to decorate the statues on the acropolis. Gold that allowed them to found even the expedition in Sicily for example.
Just found your channel. I love your content. Subscribed!
Egyptian architecture has a similar issue in that in most temples, the amazing color is almost completely destroyed (there are exceptions). Fortunately, art from tombs (including statues found in tombs) have preserved this in many cases. Nevertheless, there are cases where fully painted statutes were discovered and photographically recorded coming out of a tomb excavation, but Afrocentricists still howled that racist Egyptologists must have painted them to hide the "true" color of the Egyptians.
They're all a bunch of loonies. I keep running into black Hebrew Israelites, the terrorist group, everywhere online. Also indo supremacists who believe that ancient India was full of flying cars and space ships.
I watch this channel and constantly find myself grateful to my 10th grade World History teacher and subsequent classical history Professors in College who taught fact and not just supposition.
in that case you are lucky to have this kind of people in your life. good for you
That’s good, as the person above me said lucky too. Thankfully I didn’t have teachers pushing political ideology when I was in history class but with that being said they also didn’t make sure that everything they taught was accurate unfortunately. Well 18 years of learning history independently have fixed that issue.
Love the way that you point out and dismantle politicized historical falsehoods. 🙌❤
I can’t believe that people aren’t more upset about that kind of stuff. You’re doing a fairly thankless thing and probably get attacked by narrow minded people a lot and I commend you for your honor Sir 👏💐
It would have been a mix of some statues looking extremely good, and also things loosing color, getting damaged, vandalized, it all depends on the time we land on history, maybe we like to imagine the age of Rome as everything being golden and perfect, when clearly they would have been problems for everyone to deal, years of peace, and years of warfare, problems with a plague. But the statues are made of solid materials, people can paint them again and make them look brand new. Like a modern town, the town has a small population, people care about things, and they maintain the important parts they care about, but some places need to be reformed and fixed.
Think about modern apartments and homes. Usually the walls are painted white, cream, pale tan, light gray, etc. When walls are painted other colors, they are painted in large blocks of color. Outside walls are painted in more colors but again they are painted in large blocks. Stone, bricks, etc. are left in their natural colors.
We don't usually paint murals directly on our inside walls. Sometimes they are painted on outside walls which can cause controversy. We do fill our homes with color in the form of rugs, curtains, furniture, paintings, dishes, pots & pans, utensils and so forth. For instance, my toaster oven & coffee maker are red. I have a set of spoons, ladles, & turners that are bright green, blue, orange, cherry red, etc. We also have small sculptures, containers, stuffed animals, pillows, sheets, blankets, towels, etc in color, prints, and pictures all over inside our homes. We enjoy them in private.
People in the past put color, including paintings, on their walls where everyone could see them.
(It's not a 100% in either case.)
my friend, your videos are banging lately!!!
NICE PRESENTATION
Buildings and statues that already have a lot of relief don't necessarily look better with paint.
This could simply be an expression of the taste of our time, but it is also a more objective fact that monochromatic reliefs and statues allow a stronger and more dramatic play of light and shadow, while brightly painted figures and facades have a more painterly expression.
Temperature expansion differential between the paints, metals and stone causes it to eventually delaminate. The best would be pigment that permeate the surface of the stone but even that would eventually leech out or the surface of the stone would wear deep enough to remove it
Given how many technologies we know to have been lost, it's not at all unlikely that they had such pigments worked out in some places.
What color were they before your ancestors colonise the world 🌎 Black
@@robertbeisert3315what color were they before your ancestors colonize the world 🌎 Black
I have to say, the plain white marble statues have a certain grandeur, something mystical, something beyond human (ie ethereal, godlike) to it. There is a serenity that the coloured statues just do not convey.
Then again, I tend to prefer sketches to line-art and finished art pieces in most instances.
Honestly I've known since I was a child that the Ancient world was full of color, mostly because we have Ancient status and murals in the local museum that still have bits of color (They are still mostly white, but you can see faint traces of paint, and it's highlighted in the text) but also, mostly, because my father used to show me one of his huge book series on the history of the world, where it had painted illustrations of Roman and Greek architecture in full colors.
Yet still, if I close my mind and try to imagine a Greek Statue, it will undoubtly be white. It's simply the imagery we have thanks to all the documentaries that show the statues as they are now, or the exposure we have to Renaissance Art.
I appreciate that you make a hard transition to your in-vido ads. It sadly seems to be a trend for many channels to try to make "seamless" transitions.... and I find that leads to misunderstandings. Sometimes it's unclear what the ad is. That can lead to misunderstanding.
I like to describe the study of history to non historians as being like looking at a vast, vast painting of the past through a tiny keyhole. You can only see a tiny, minuscule portion of the painting but have to use that information to recreate the rest of it.
In the UK, some historic sites have reintroduced colour during restoration work. Stirling Castle in Scotland and Dover Castle in England are two such sites.
One reason I enjoyed the television series 'Rome' was how vibrant with colour the sets and costumes were.
These books, Fifty Famous Roman Men, The history of Julius Caesar, Trollops Life of Cicero, Life in the Times of Cicero. The TV series Rome was quite accurate in subtle ways. too historic technical for the average TV viewer methinks.
@@joefish6091 I liked the way the writer wove fictional stories about ordinary people in with real historical figures and history. Allowed a look behind the curtain.