If any colour can stake a claim to be the oldest, it is red. We’ve been seeing red (an expression which turns out to be more than just metaphorical) since our neolithic days. It is the most primary of primary colours – the very blood in our veins is red. Except, of course, when it’s blue.
On the earliest daubs of our remote human ancestors, red stole the show. In the caves of Lascaux in France, or Pinnacle Point in South Africa, can be found paintings in an earthy, dusty red. This pigment – along with other colours used – was made from ochre, a family of earth pigments whose name is now, confusingly, most associated with the yellow-brown pigment found in art shops and painting sets. These paintings date back perhaps as far as 15,000BC. Red is ancient indeed.
Many Stone Age graves, too, have been found to contain red ochre. Some experts theorise this was simply to mark the grave, so no one mistakenly dug it up. Others believe it was used to colour the hair, skin or clothes of the buried – either way, it clearly had important ritual significance.
Unsurprisingly, red appears as a symbolic colour in many a warrior setting. In Roman mythology, it was associated with blood, of course, and courage. It was the colour of the god of war, Mars – and the colour of the army. Roman soldiers wore red tunics, while gladiators were adorned in red. Generals wore a scarlet cloak, and to celebrate victories would have their bodies painted entirely in red. Brides at a Roman wedding wore a red shawl, called a flammeum. Red was the colour of blood – but blood was a symbol not just of death, but of life – of fertility and love.
Through the Middle Ages, red was utterly dominant. The emperor Charlemagne painted his palace red, wore red shoes and is even rumoured to have had red hair. In Christian art, it represented the blood of Christ and of Christian martyrs – and became (as it still is) the colour worn by Catholic cardinals.
From the 16th century, a new way of making red appeared in Europe, from cochineal beetles imported by Spanish merchants from the new world. This, naturally, made red terribly fashionable. Don’t hold that against it, though. It passed.
Today, even the most painfully fashionable western bride would be unlikely to walk down the aisle in red. This, though, is the tradition in China, where brides still wear red wedding gowns, and are carried to the ceremony in a red litter. In China, red has always symbolised good fortune and joy - and as a colour of happiness is even banned from funerals. In Greece, Albania and Armenia, too, brides still wear red veils.
Chinese brides also walk down a red carpet. Sound familiar? Not an invention of the Oscars ceremony or the film industry, as you might think. In fact the earliest reference to walking down a red carpet is said to be in the work of Aeschylus, from 458BC. When the eponymous hero Agamemnon returns from Troy, he is greeted by his wife Clytemnestra, who offers him a red path to walk upon. This is no mere coincidence – the meaning is clear:
Now my beloved, step down from your chariot, and let not your foot, my lord, touch the Earth. Servants, let there be spread before the house he never expected to see, where Justice leads him in, a crimson path.
The red carpet treatment, indeed.
Inextricably linked with its association with brides, flowering and fertility, comes reds shadier side – and the reason those western brides would be unlikely to marry in it. But has the (possibly) oldest colour always been linked with the world’s ‘oldest profession’ and those red light districts? Perhaps not - in fact yellow has been more commonly associated with prostitution. In classic Greece, prostitutes wore saffron-dyed clothes, while in Rome they might dye their hair yellow. It is really a specific shade of red – scarlet – that must carry the can. And that association comes thanks to the bible, and Revelations 17, verses 1-6, where “the Great Harlot” comes “dressed in purple and scarlet”. Purple clearly had a better PR team than poor old scarlet.
That PR team should have sprung into action the minute red started associated with revolutionaries. Long before McCarthy started hunting for “reds under the bed”, the colour started hanging out with some dodgy types. During the French revolution, revolutionaries began wearing red caps and carrying red flags. Red become the colour of the worker’s movement – from the French revolution of 1848, the Paris Commune in 1870 and of socialist parties across Europe. By the 20th century, it was the outright color of revolution – whether Bolshevik or Chinese, adorning flags from Russia, Cuba Vietnam and more.
So red can be both happy, honourable, brave and virginal and, well, quite the opposite – it’s all about the cultural context. But whether you see its innocence or its corruption, it turns out that red actually enhances women’s attractiveness to men. It even enhances the value of a painting – though this is down largely to its symbolic significance in Chinese culture affecting the international art market, rather than anything more, well, primitive.
And though it is hardly rare (it is the most popular colour on national flags, for a start) there is one area in which red is a distinct minority: only 1-2% of the human population has red hair. The colour is produced by the same pigment, pheomelanin, that makes our lips red. Those beautiful redheads have a higher level of that, and less of the dark pigment eumelanin.
In 1888, Vincent Van Gogh wrote that he “sought to express with red and green the terrible human passions”. Ancient, complex and representing extremes – red is nothing if not passionate. Perhaps Van Gogh would have seen red, should he have lived long enough to see the reds in his paintings starting to fade away.
