Antiquity

Prehistoric times & antiquity

The origin of the word 'green’ goes back to the old Teutonic root 'grô’, meaning to grow. Plants use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into life-giving oxygen and starch. The magic substance at the heart of this process called photosynthesis is the green pigment chlorophyll converting sunrays into other energy forms utilized in the complex chemical reactions.

The green pigment chlorophyll has existed on Earth since the dawn of life itself some four billion years ago. Green as a color was, oddly enough, barely used by Man during Stone Age. Neolithic cave paintings do not contain any depictions of plants even if green earth pigments were available at that time. New gods enter the picture after decline of the hunter peoples and with the emergence of farming and with these new gods green comes to more prominence. The historically documented great deluge ca. 10 000 years ago destroyed the green vegetation on Earth and the few survivors were left with a yearning for the recovery of green plants on our planet.

Green and blue had a positive connotation in ancient Egypt. The Goddess of Heaven and the Cow Hathor was sometimes depicted as green tree. She was governing over love and life. One image of this goddess in a burial chamber depicts a heavy breast hanging from a fig and feeding a pharaoh. The green mineral malachite was especially important. The raw mineral was grinded, mixed with egg white, acacia resin or fig milk to give a pigment or make-up of emerald green color. Egyptian women used malachite to paint their eye lids. It also remained a popular gemstone up to the present day. Egyptians mined malachite at the Sinai mountain to gain metallic copper. Powdered malachite was used in Arabic world to cure abscesses. Healing effects of malachite and its the use for preventing children accidents remained a legend till our times.