Red is my favorite color. I’ve often wondered about color preferences. When someone tells me, for instance, that they love green but don’t like red, I am moved to ponder our common humanity. I wonder, for instance, if they see the same colors I see. Maybe what they see as green is the very color that I see as red. Maybe we’re agreed, but can never know it.

I suspect one factor is food. I tend to like red or reddish foods – meat, strawberries, cherries. Because I was born with a surfeit of bitter taste receptors on my tongue, I’m inclined to dislike green vegetables (yes, I do eat them anyway, at least sometimes. Had broccoli just tonight). And I don’t like lime. So when I see green it’s associated with various foods that don’t appeal to me.

Anyway, I just rediscovered the marvelous blog, mirabilis.ca. Because I’ve never quite mastered this business of migrating bookmarks, I generally end up searching for my favorite urls all over again, every time I change browsers or get a new computer. Somehow I’d lost track of mirabilis, though I was tormented by a persistent, poignant memory of some good thing lost. But I’ve found it again now, and with it this link to an article from the Conversation on the history of red dyes.

Most animal reds are hidden within creatures – like blood – and are not on open display. The excavation of Neolithic burial sites has turned up jars filled with dull-coloured dried insects, kermes, which have a brilliant hidden red that was used as textile dye. It was also a Neolithic food colouring and the colour red is still associated with health today.

One surprise for me in Viking reenacting has been that a fairly bright red is one of the colors acceptable under most authenticity standards.