todayilearned

1159 readers

1 users here now

todayilearned

founded 1 year ago

For centuries, the only way to get purple dye in Europe was by harvesting tens of thousands of murex snails from the ocean. TIL the Mayans discovered this independently (www.mayaincaaztec.com)

submitted 5 months ago by FlyingSquid to c/todayilearned

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

They also produced the color purple or lavender from the murex mollusks that were found on the seacoast. Dye makers rubbed two of the mollusks together in order to extract the dye.

That sounds simple enough, but it also involved some real chemistry:

https://hal.science/hal-03202592/document

Purple was one of the most expensive and difficult dyes to acquire and process. 1 gram takes 10,000 snails. In Europe, it was solely used for kings.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Tyrian Purple: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple