Humans now live in a colorful world, but only 100 years ago, some colors have not been "born", even if the common colors, most of them need to be extracted from the animals and plants of nature and ore, expensive and very easy to fade.
The most representative is purple, which was invented in 1856 as the first synthetic dye, and until then people have been using a method dating back to the 16th century BC, extracting purple dyes from special conchs, and recently archaeologists have discovered the remains of making this dye.
Located in the eastern part of present-day Crete, Greece, this site of an early dye workshop was a settlement from 1800 TO 1500 BC and belonged to the Minoan civilization (2850 BC to 1450 BC).
Archaeologists found many bone snails (Murex) in the dye workshop, and most importantly, they found a stone bone snail breeding pond, and there are traces of stone processing next to the pond.
At that time, the Mediterranean people called this color extracted from the bone snail tyrian purple (bone snail purple), which was first successfully extracted and spread by the Phoenicians who were good at navigation and business, and "Phoenicia" in ancient Greek means "purple country". Archaeology proves that the Minoans also later mastered the technique of extracting purple dyes.
When the bone snail is attacked, it will release a bromide, and people will poke and stab the bone snail to release the dye secretion, or directly remove the gland of the bone snail for extraction.
It is said that 10,000 bone snails can extract about 1 gram of dye, which is quite time-consuming and laborious, usually done by hired Thracians. The extracted purple dye was expensive, and only Roman nobles and officials could wear clothing with purple markings, which no one else could afford to consume.
The settlements found this time in eastern Crete have some remains in addition to the ruins of dye workshops. For example, granaries, stoves, houses, etc., as well as elaborate pottery, gold jewelry, precious metals, precious stones and copper products.
In a corner of the house building, archaeologists also found a gold ring, 26 gold beads, a gold bracelet, a silver bead, 5 copper beads and a copper ring, as well as a large number of glass beads of different shapes, lapis lazuli, amethyst, and red onyx. In a copper vase, archaeologists also detected tin, the second time tin has been found in the whole of Crete.
Based on all the artifacts unearthed, the researchers speculate that the settlement once belonged to a group that made a living doing business. They extracted dyes, made metal utensils, made gold and silver jewelry, and traded with other groups through these crafts, and they also became rich because of the great profits from them.
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