And, what if, due to some genetic drift, more and more people become color blind? Or hell, what if, over the eons it would take for radiation to peter out, we all became completely blind?
Fail.
http://boingboing.net/2011/08/12/how-language-affects-color-perception.html
From the BBC: Do you see what I see? How language affects color perception.
"What I'd then ask however, is how do you link the horror with the physical objects being warned against. That seems to me a much more difficult task."
Here we are in complete agreement. But I assert that this statement actually proves my point.
While the image in The Scream may signal horror, what are we referring to as being horrific? Radiation poisoning is not necessarily dramatic. People can get small doses over long enough time and the end result is the same as a high dose over a short period of time.
So, you wander into an area, you see the pictogram. Okay, something is supposed to horrify you or scare you... what is that? The trees, the barrels, the 3 eyed fish, the concrete "building"... none of that looks particularly dangerous. You scout around. Nope. Nothing dangerous. Must be a big "prehistoric" painting.... those are everywhere. I'll bring my family here to settle down. 25 years later.... thyroid and other cancers start appearing. Kids are born deformed. Is anybody going to associate the big screaming guy with what is going on around them?
How do you show invisible waves that make you sick? How do you know that the Sumerian image I showed in my previous post isn't trying to do that? What are those wavy lines around the man sitting down? What do they represent?
It literally can't be done. Visual language is not written or oral language. It does not access or activate the same areas of the brain. It cannot be decoded in the same way as the Egyptian hieroglyphs (which are not pictograms, but phonetic symbols) were decoded by using the Rosetta Stone. It cannot be decoded and translated using commonalities across all written and oral language; because it is neither. It is an entirely different type of language.
And if you watch the clip at boingboing, you will see that learning a language actually changed and changes how we see. Culture constraints, mores and fashions also impact our visual perception.
And if oral language changes over time, then our perception of visual language will also change. That means that, while we can still understand Shakespeare, that's only a 250 year difference in language drift. At 10 thousand years, we might as well be trying to decipher ancient Japanese scrolls when we've only ever been exposed to modern Romance Languages.
And speaking of Ancient Japanese and danger warnings. This link proves my point exactly: You can put a warning in a place of danger. It does not guarantee that people will comprehend it or heed it even though it is written in their native language.
www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/asia/21stones.html
Local scholars said only a handful of villages like Aneyoshi heeded these old warnings by keeping their houses safely on high ground. More commonly, the stones and other warnings were disregarded as coastal towns grew in the boom years after World War II. Even communities that had moved to high ground eventually relocated to the seaside to be nearer their boats and nets.
“As time passes, people inevitably forget, until another tsunami comes that kills 10,000 more people,”
Yes, some heeded the warnings, most did not.
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