The Development Of Paint Throughout The Millennia

The development of paint throughout the millennia is a testament to the human desire for a little bit of beauty and color in what started out to be a bleak and mundane existence. For sure, the earliest examples of color and its use through paint goes back at least 20, 000 years, and can be seen in many cave drawings in France and elsewhere.

What many may not know is that the Chinese, literally thousands of years ago, were the first to create the manufacturing processes and development of high grade types of paint. The ancient Egyptians -- who were fascinated by paint and color in all its forms -- worked hard to color their world using all manner of paints. Around 1500 BCE, the art of making paint was improved to a high degree by the Greeks.

As with everything else the Greeks invented, the Romans picked up the mantle and began to work with interesting processes that saw their paint making skills go to a whole new level. At some point between 600 BCE and 400 AD, the introduction of various kinds of varnish -- which can be a critical component of oil based paints -- occurred. There were simultaneous developments in other parts of the world, too.

For example, Aztec Indians experimented with certain dyes -- red was extremely popular -- that they came to value more than gold. It may also come as a surprise that the ancient Greek philosopher and scholar Plato was the first to discover that the mixing together of two different colors could produce a third unique color. This was a great accomplishment during that time.

The materials that have gone into the making of paint throughout the millennia also are very interesting and extremely diverse. The Romans, of course, gave us the color purple -- which quickly came to be associated with royalty. It took the shells of nearly 4, 000, 000 mollusks to create a pound of this color paint. Brown was initially created from the dried out ink sac of a squid.

Spaniards introduced the color red -- or crimson -- to Europe in the 16th century. A pound of the extract required to create it, the formula for which the Spaniards learned from the Aztecs, required nearly 1, 000, 000 female cochineal beetles in order to bring it to its full color. Most paint prior to the 19th century required some sort of oil to bind it together with its constituents such as those beetles.

By the late 1800s, the now-famous Sherwin-Williams Company had perfected a process whereby all of the finely ground particles of whatever substances were needed to create a certain color could be completely suspended in linseed oil. This particular paint is still the basis by which just about every oil-based paint today is made, which is quite a testament to the efforts of that company.

The development of paint throughout the millennia provides us with a glimpse into the human quest to introduce color into the world in ways which helped to bring just a bit of light into what could have been a very dull existence. The first examples of paint and color go back over 20, 000 years, and people have used all kinds of materials in the paints that have been developed over the years.