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Colour categories in a stone-age tribe

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An Addendum to this article was published on 09 December 1999

Abstract

The Dani of Irian Jaya are a stone-age Melanesian people who have provided an empirical basis for the study of cross-cultural perception and cognition1,2,3. Although they had only two terms for describing colour, the Dani memory for colour seemed to be much like that of modern English speakers. We have investigated another stone-age culture, the Berinmo of Papua New Guinea, for the way in which they categorize colours, but the results do not support the idea that colour categories could be universal.

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Figure 1: Distribution of English and Berinmo colour names.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Goldsmiths College, University of London, London, SE14 6NW, UK

    Jules Davidoff & Debi Roberson

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 5XH, Surrey, UK

    Ian Davies

Authors
  1. Jules Davidoff
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  2. Ian Davies
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  3. Debi Roberson
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Davidoff, J., Davies, I. & Roberson, D. Colour categories in a stone-age tribe. Nature 398, 203–204 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/18335

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