In considering both color vision and color values, this essay brings together natural history and human history. After describing the character and evolution of color vision, it examines positive and negative attitudes toward color in leading cultures of Eurasia. It goes on to discuss color perspectives in those cultures, an examination that discloses a Eurasian pattern: while rejecting color in significant respects, Japan also developed a sophisticated perception of it; China periodically followed the West Asian lead on color; and West Asia represented the radiant center of the Eurasian spectrum. Rejecting West Asia's high valuation of color, classical Greece and Rome thereby established a European tradition that eventually was overwhelmed during the early modern period as a consequence of pigments and colorful commodities being imported from around the world. This foreshadowed the modern experience of rich color, a consequence of science and technology making universally available an extraordinary array of saturated hues. Such access to color distinguishes the contemporary world from all past societies.

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In 1421:The Year China Discovered America, Gavin Menzies claims that several Chinese fleets sailed around the world, charting sea coasts, founding colonies, and creating a global maritime empire. Moreover, he argues that these Chinese exploits shaped European map making, thereby inspiring Portuguese overseas discoveries and the rise of the West. The author's attempt to rewrite world history, however, is based on a hodgepodge of circular reasoning, bizarre speculation, distorted sources, and slapdash research. In reality, the voyages described did not take place, Chinese exploration did not influence European cartography, and there is no evidence of the Chinese fleets in the Americas.

For more than a millennium Chinese porcelain was the most universally admired and most widely imitated product in the world. It conveyed Chinese culture across vast distances, penetrated societies in manifold ways, and reshaped ceramic traditions throughout the Afro-Eurasian ecumene. As the principal material vehicle for the assimilation and transmission of artistic themes and designs, porcelain provides the first and most extensive material evidence for sustained cultural encounter on a worldwide scale, perhaps even for intimations of truly global culture.

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