> But the Romans and Greeks would still be able to distinguish it from
> red and yellow. There are many languages that have only four color
> terms ie white, black, red and 'grue'. The last term would cover the
> english concepts of 'green', 'yellow' and 'blue'.
Sorry, I appear to have been misleading in my post. I'm assuming that the cones n' rods (and other optical gear) is generally similar, and that (for humans, at least) the ability to _differentiate_ between colors exists. No argument there. What I'm curious about is not whether or not, say, a Lunar citizen sees "red" any differently, but if they _identify_ it differently: to wit, what're the "grues"? Would, say, the aforementioned Lunar consider red, crimson, pink or whatever else to be primary colors? "Why, of course there are 10 basic colors: black, white, blue, green and six shades of red." Sure, the Lunar can "see" light blue; he just doesn't dignify it with it's own distinctive identity. (Isn't light blue a color, like pink is a lighter shade of red?" Lunar: "Well, no! Pink is, well _pink_.) Thanks for the reference (this is a little outside my field).
Part of this curiousity is because there seem to be some firm connections between certain colors and pantheons/deities; does Yelm worship promote more shades of Yellow? This may sound silly, but...
> In any case, I do not think the Uz would percieve shades of black as
> primary colors because black is by _definition_ the absence of any
> light. She could distinguish between two objects that appear black to
> the human eye but she is doing this via her Darksense IMO.
Hmmm... "shades of grey" might have been a better term for me to use. I vaguely recall that _Trollpak_ states trolls are color-blind (or at least Mistress Race trolls, who have crappy vision in any case: my copy of Trollpak is, alas, not at hand). Ergo, do the Uz have a grey-scale "color" spectrum? (Or, alternatively, do they use Darksensed texture "spectrum" rather than bother about with shades of grey...?)
I'm also not sure your average Uz is going to buy this absence of light business: white is created by the absense of _darkness._ :)
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